Support group has been chosen because a support group is a self-help group which significantly changes lifestyle and provides a long-term goal to the group members. Support groups play a number of roles of the self-help group like the other members of the support group provides unconditional acceptance, assist in the inward reflection and provides a genuine space for open and genuine interpersonal interaction and helps the person commit to change (Coco et al., 2019).   

Rationale for choosing the group

Population serving

The population the group counselling session will be targeted is the youth population from the age range 18-25 years. This age group is chosen as this is an emerging adulthood stage of development in which the person is often faced with various stressors of life which influence the abuse of substances. At this stage of development, people often engage in maladaptive coping strategies like use of substances. In the USA, about 10.5% of the older population had an alcohol use disorder in 2021.

Number of sessions

8-10 sessions are adequate for the group session. Eight is the minimum number of counselling sessions as there are four major stages of counselling and these eight sessions can be divided among these four stages, two sessions each stage for the support group counselling. Depending on the diverse needs of these clients within the group, the number of sessions can change to 10 or 12 (Reif et al., 2014).

Number of participants

The support group will contain a minimum of 5 people and a maximum of 10 people. More than 12 people will create a huge group which will not be possible to manage. Support groups with more than 15 people will become unmanageable and impersonal.

Goals of the counselling group

The main goals of the counselling group are for the group members to support each other, accept each other and understand each other’s issues without being unconditional. Another major goal of the group is to teach adaptive coping strategies.

References:

Coco, G. L., Melchiori, F., Oieni, V., Infurna, M. R., Strauss, B., Schwartze, D., … & Gullo, S. (2019). Group treatment for substance use disorder in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized-controlled trials. Journal of substance abuse treatment, 99, 104-116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2019.01.016

Reif, S., Braude, L., Lyman, D. R., Dougherty, R. H., Daniels, A. S., Ghose, S. S., … & Delphin-Rittmon, M. E. (2014). Peer recovery support for individuals with substance use disorders: Assessing the evidence. Psychiatric Services, 65(7), 853-861. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201400047