https://doi.org/10.4081/ripppo.2020.501

Online Supportive Group as social intervention to face COVID lockdown. A qualitative study on psychotherapists, psychology trainees and students, and community people

Vol. 23 No. 3 (2020)
Submitted: September 28, 2020
Accepted: December 1, 2020
Published: January 20, 2021
COVID-19 lockdown, online psychological group intervention, focus groups, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), psychodynamic approach.
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Authors

Emanuela Brusadelli
emanuela@uow.edu.au
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5669-1141
School of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Wollongong, Australia.
Laura Ferrari
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4646-5941
C.O.I.R.A.G., Scuola Coirag Sede di Milano; Ariele Psicoterapia, Italy.
Michele Benetti
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7695-8088
C.O.I.R.A.G., Scuola Coirag Sede di Milano, Italy.
Stefania Bruzzese
C.O.I.R.A.G., Scuola Coirag Sede di Milano, Italy.
Giada Maria Tonelli
C.O.I.R.A.G., Scuola Coirag Sede di Milano, Italy.
Salvatore Gullo
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4007-6336
Department of Psychology, University of Palermo, Italy.

Several psychological interventions have been activated to help people during the coronavirus pandemic, and research highlights the crucial role of group interventions as a space for sharing and processing the psychological experiences linked to this emergency and the consequent changes in people’s lifestyles. In this context, psychologists are mostly providers of this kind of service more than users. This study aimed at investigating and comparing post-hoc the subjective experience of psychotherapists, psychology trainees and students, and individuals of the general population who participated in a psychodynamically-oriented supportive group intervention. Fifty-two subjects were enrolled to participate to focus groups aimed at exploring participants’ decision to participate, their perceptions on how the support group influenced their elaboration of the psychological effects of pandemic/lockdown, and their feedback on its utility. Transcripts of the focus groups were analyzed with the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC). Differences in the use of words/linguistic categories between groups were tested through chi-square tests. Content analysis was conducted by independent judges who extracted the most relevant comments. Preliminary results showed the main features related to the crisis response, and how belonging to different social roles was associated with different ways of experiencing and sharing emotions. People react in different ways to traumatic events, and how people react may say a lot about how they cope with the event and the extent to which the event plays a role in the future. Clinical implications on the use of this data for future treatment planning are also discussed.

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How to Cite

Brusadelli, E., Ferrari, L., Benetti, M., Bruzzese, S., Tonelli, G. M., & Gullo, S. (2021). Online Supportive Group as social intervention to face COVID lockdown. A qualitative study on psychotherapists, psychology trainees and students, and community people. Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome, 23(3). https://doi.org/10.4081/ripppo.2020.501
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