About

A Brief History and Introduction to C-GRP

The consortium for group research and practice, or C-GRP for short, was created at the beginning of the millennium (2000) by two BYU faculty members (Robert Gleave and Gary Burlingame) and two doctoral students from the clinical psychology program (Jennifer Johnson and Rob Davies). Our intention was to merge our daily practice of group treatment with programmatic research on small group treatments. In 2000 Dr. Gleave was the group coordinator at the BYU Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) center and Dr. Burlingame was a faculty member in BYU’s clinical psychology program. Robert had focused his career on the clinical delivery of group treatment and Gary had focused a large portion of his career on empirical research testing the efficacy and mechanisms of change for small group treatments. Their intention was to “kitchen test” research ideas in daily practice in two settings. The first practice setting was CAPS, staffed by 50 clinical and counseling psychologists and student-trainees (interns, post-docs & practicum) treating undergraduate students with both diagnosable psychiatric disorders as well as adjustment concerns. Dr. Burlingame has been an outcome and group treatment consultant at the Utah State Hospital (USH) since the late 1990s and the USH serves a population of nearly 350 patients who primarily meet the seriously mentally ill (SMI) classification. Group treatment, after medication, is the primary treatment patients receive at the USH and so this is our second practice setting to test ideas on how to improve group treatment.

The group practice at CAPS consisted of 25-30 groups per week ranging from diagnostically structured treatments (anxiety, depression, eating disorder, etc.) through psychoeducational groups (PEGs) to less structured interpersonal process groups following a Yalom model. The USH group practice consists of 350 groups per week supported by multiple disciplines (psychology, social work, occupational and recreation therapy, nursing, etc.). These groups range from activity groups through psychoeducational and traditional therapy groups with the latter including the use of several empirically supported group treatments (DBT, CBT-psychosis, etc.). The goal in both settings is to employ evidence-based protocols and support group leaders by regularly using measures to assess patient improvement and key factors known to moderate treatment success in group treatment. Our working assumption is that if empirical support is found in both settings (college students and SMI) for group protocols or methods, they would likely generalize to clinical populations having mild to moderate levels of psychiatric disturbance.

Over the past 20 years, C-GRP has grown to include a number of faculty and doctoral students from the APA approved counseling and clinical psychology Ph.D. programs at BYU. We have merged our research and training focus with the APA approved internship programs at CAPS and USH providing group research and practice opportunities for interested interns. A typical C-GRP meeting will have 5-8 faculty from the two academic APA programs and clinical faculty from CAPS. In addition, Dr. Burlingame has weekly meetings at USH that merge the research and training material from C-GRP into the APA approved internship and daily practice of group treatments. Over the years, USH interns have participated in group treatment research and training opportunities supported by C-GRP. What binds us is our love of group treatment practice and curiosity regarding empirical support to improve clinical practice.