Why attend groups
Groups help people gain knowledge and awareness and develop the skills essential to recovery and improved mental health and well-being.
Participation in groups helps foster:
- Identification – ‘I am not the only person with this/these issue(s)’
- Validation – ‘Other people struggle as well therefore I am not weak, stupid or crazy’
- A sense of belonging – ‘These people understand me, do not judge me, and I am accepted and welcome here’
- Reciprocity – ‘When I help others, I am also helping myself’
- Visible Recovery – ‘f they can do it, just maybe I can too’
It is proven that people who attend groups alongside one-to-one support are far more likely to achieve their recovery goals. Here are a few examples of why groups help:
- Groups raise knowledge and awareness; developing skills essential to recovery, promoting changes in cognition, emotion and behaviour, and providing a forum for mutual support.
- Groups provide positive peer-support and encouragement to abstain from substances.
- Groups reduce the sense of isolation that most people who have problematic substance use experience.
- Groups can add a needed structure, discipline and sense of purpose and achievement.
- Groups help to lower the stigma surrounding substance use issues and lower the accompanying guild and shame.
- Groups instil hope, a sense that, “If they can make it, maybe I can too.”