GROUP COUNSELLING

Group Counselling Helps Individuals Cope with ODD

Group Counselling Helps Individuals Cope with ODD

Introduction

Brigman and Campbell (2003) reported that achievement and behaviour are positively impacted by group counselling interventions that focus not only on these desired outcomes but also address the social and emotional dimensions of group participants. Group counselling also provides a way to address the developmental needs for social acceptance and belonging among adolescents (Bailey & Bradbury-Bailey, 2007). They recommend group counselling more often than individual counselling for most ADHD children. Group sessions closely approximate real-life peer relationship situations; group members can help each other acquire skills and make generalizations. Group counselling activities that elicit the behaviours and feelings associated with social problems enable counsellors to intervene and assist children who are low performers in school and have difficulties with their peers. Interventions applied consistently within the health care setting seem to be the most effective for individuals cope with ODD.

Literature Review

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders of childhood. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines ODD as a pattern of negativistic, hostile and deviant behaviour that is severe enough to impair the child's functioning for at least 6 months and does not occur solely during an episode of psychotic or mood disorder.

ODD is considered a disruptive behaviour disorder, because many children with ODD have similar cognitive and social deficits and behaviour problems as children with other behaviour disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD). (Burke, Loeber, Lahey, Rathouz, 2005) Although many studies suggest that ODD is associated prospectively with ADHD and CD, more than 60% of children with ODD do not have ADHD in childhood and approximately only 10% will develop conduct disorder. ODD is also a common comorbidity in studies of mood and anxiety disorders suggesting that there is also important links with internalizing pathology. These possible links are not surprising, given that children with ODD are easily annoyed, have problems with affect regulation and are often described as moody and irritable. The degree of comorbidity and the mechanism for comorbidity between ODD and internalizing disorders are unclear.

Educational personnel are challenged to address the needs of children who are oppositional and defy authority in the school setting. Despite this challenge, the needs of children who are oppositional and defiant often go unmet in the schools.

For example, Durlak (2005) suggested that between 10 percent and 12 percent of children experience moderately clinical problems during their school careers, many of these children are oppositionally defiant to authority and predisposed to conduct disorder in the absence of intervention. As Kazdin (2004) noted, at best only between 10 percent and 30 percent of children with such dysfunctions receive mental health care. With this in mind, Gulotta speculated that "if prevention were found to be effective for only 20% of those who would develop problems, as many children would be helped as are currently being served through traditional treatment channels" (Gulotta, cited in Durlak, 2005, ...