Why Do We Keep Trying to Solve Everything One Person at a Time?

There is something interesting about the way psychological support is usually organised. One person books an appointment. One person sits in a room. One person speaks to a professional. The conversation is private, focused and individual.

And sometimes that is exactly what is needed.

But human beings do not live as individuals. We live in families. We form friendships. We work in teams. We sit in classrooms. We belong to communities. We experience conflict, rejection, pressure, belonging and exclusion in relation to other people.

So why is so much psychological support still designed around the individual?

Perhaps we have become so accustomed to individual support that we have forgotten the psychological value of being in a group.

Group therapy is not simply individual therapy with several people sitting in the same room. A properly structured group creates something different. There is the person leading the group, but there are also the relationships developing between the people within it. Members listen to one another. They notice differences. They recognise similarities. They receive feedback. They see how other people respond to difficult experiences. They have opportunities to practise communication and relationships in real time.

The group itself becomes part of the psychological process.

And this is one of the reasons group psychotherapy requires specific knowledge and skill. The professional is not only working with an individual; they are also paying attention to the group as a whole, its dynamics, cohesion, participation, boundaries, conflict and development.

And that distinction matters.

A room full of people is not automatically a therapeutic group. Putting chairs in a circle does not create psychological safety. Asking people to “share” does not constitute psychological intervention.

The group has to be designed.

There has to be a clear purpose. Appropriate participants need to be identified. Expectations need to be established. Confidentiality and boundaries need to be addressed. The facilitator needs to know how to manage difficult interactions, silence, conflict, disclosure and changes in group dynamics.

The quality of the group matters.

Research has repeatedly identified cohesion, the sense that members are connected to and committed to the group as an important factor associated with positive outcomes in group therapy.

This is where group-based psychological support becomes particularly interesting outside traditional therapy rooms.

Consider a school. A school may have a counsellor. That counsellor may provide valuable individual support to learners who need it.

But what happens to the learners who are carrying pressure, friendship difficulties, academic anxiety, social concerns or questions about themselves but are not going to make an individual counselling appointment?

A structured weekly group creates another point of access.

Now consider a workplace. An organisation may offer an employee assistance programme. It may provide individual psychological referrals. It may run a wellbeing presentation once a year.

But there are psychological issues that exist between people, not simply inside individuals.

Communication. Conflict. Leadership. Boundaries. Team relationships. Psychological safety.

Those issues can sometimes be better understood when the people involved are given an appropriately structured space to examine how they function together.

The same principle applies to staff groups.

A group does not have to wait until people are in crisis before it becomes useful. It can provide a regular psychological space in which people can think about pressure, relationships, communication, professional demands and the ways they are responding to what is happening around them.

That does not mean every group should be called therapy.

And this distinction is important.

Group therapy, psychological groups, psychoeducational groups, professional groups and facilitated wellbeing groups are not interchangeable.

They have different purposes, structures, levels of clinical intervention and professional requirements.

The name matters because the model matters.

A school-based psychological group should not simply be a therapy group placed into a school because the word “group” sounds appealing. A workplace discussion group should not become an unstructured space where employees disclose highly personal information without appropriate boundaries. A staff wellbeing session is not automatically psychotherapy.

Good group work begins with knowing what the group is actually for.

That is also why group work should not be viewed as a cheaper version of individual therapy.

It is a different psychological format.

And for some people, the presence of other people is precisely what makes the work possible.

Someone who believes, “Nobody else experiences this,” may hear another person describe something remarkably similar. Someone who always withdraws when challenged may discover what happens when they remain in the conversation. Someone who struggles to speak may eventually find their voice. Someone who is accustomed to seeing themselves only through their own perspective may encounter another way of understanding the situation.

These experiences cannot simply be recreated by one person speaking to a professional behind a closed door.

The group introduces something individual work cannot fully reproduce:

other people.

That does not make group therapy better than individual therapy.

It makes it different.

So perhaps the question is not whether psychological support should be individual or group-based. Perhaps we need to become more thoughtful about when each format is appropriate, who it is appropriate for, and what the psychological purpose of the group actually is.

Because there is a significant difference between saying, “We have counselling available,” and saying:

“We have built psychological support into the environment.”

That is a different way of thinking.

It means psychological support does not only appear when someone reaches the point of asking for help. It can become part of the structure of a school. Part of the culture of an organisation. Part of professional development. Part of staff support. Part of psychological care.

And, when appropriately designed and clinically indicated, part of therapy itself.

We do not only need better access to psychological support. We need more thoughtful ways of delivering it.

Sometimes that means sitting across from a professional alone. Sometimes it means sitting with other people. And sometimes, the psychological work begins when we stop asking only, “What is happening inside this person?” and start asking:

“What happens to this person when they are with other people?”

That is where group work becomes much more than putting people in a room together.

It becomes psychological practice.

References

American Psychological Association. (2023). Group therapy is as effective as individual therapy, and more efficient.

American Psychological Association. (2026). Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy.

Burlingame, G. M., McClendon, D. T., & Yang, C. (2018). Cohesion in group therapy: A meta-analysis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 384–398.

Yalom, I. D., & Leszcz, M. (2020). The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (6th ed.). Basic Books.