Background: Group therapy is widely used in psychiatry and psychology, specially in the treatment of alcoholism. Nevertheless, scientific evidence of its efficacy is scarce, and professionals tend very often to doubt about its usefulness.
Methods: Clinical trial to test the efficacy of group therapy to improve abstinence and compliance of alcoholics (CIE-10 criteria) randomly assigned to standard treatment plus group therapy (TG+, n = 45) versus standard treatment alone (TG-, n = 43) during 12 months.
Results: At 6 months follow up, the percentage of alcohol consumers (26 vs 20%) and dropouts (49 vs 36%), was slightly higher among the TG- group; while Cumulated Abstinence Duration (131 days [SD 57] versus 135 days [SD 64]) tended to be higher in the TG+ group. Differences increase at the one year follow up, reaching a significant level when measuring time to first relapse (233 vs 382 days; p = 0.04). Also, the probability to remain abstinent is clearly lower in the TG- (31 vs 76%).
Conclusions: These results clearly show the efficacy of group therapy. Its effect appears from the 3rd month and increases from 6th to 12th months. Some patients, specially those who will have worse clinical evolution, refuse to attend group sessions. Also, some others who don't accept an abstinence oriented treatment, may interfere in group dynamics. In order to maximize group efficacy, extreme care should be taken in selection of patients, group composition, setting and leadership style.