ABSTRACT
In 1986, several members of our team of researchers and clinicians (W. Piper, M. McCallum, and H. Azim) worked together in the outpatient Walk-in Clinic of the Department of Psychiatry, at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Because of the high volume of patients seen in our Walk-in Clinic, approximately 2,000 new referrals each year, most patients were treated with group therapy rather than individual therapy. To obtain a more accurate account of the utilization of group therapy, we decided to conduct an informal in-house review of the objectives and apparent achievements of several therapy groups provided in the clinic, particularly the time-limited short-term therapy groups, given their cost-effective potential.
