Youth and Clinician Evaluation of Emotional Communication in Short-Term Counseling Groups

Objectives: Group interventions are recommended to prevent psychological difficulties in siblings of children with a disability. However, emotional communication and support in such groups have not previously been described or evaluated. This article describes two studies to provide such knowledge. Methods: Study 1 examined communication patterns following expressions of negative emotions in counseling groups for siblings of children with a disability. We videotaped and transcribed communication patterns in 17 counseling group sessions for siblings of children with a disability aged 11-16 years. We applied content analysis to identify communication patterns following expressions of negative emotion(s). Study 2 examined youth- and clinician-evaluated supportiveness of the four most frequent patterns from Study 1. Reenacted video examples of the patterns were shown to 136 school pupils aged 11-16 years and 68 clinicians, who rated each pattern for supportiveness using visual analog scales. Results: In Study 1, the communication was found to be either child-centered or adult-centered. Frequent adult-centered communication patterns were interviewing, informing, or avoiding. Child-centered communication often followed a consenting pattern, in which other children expressed having similar experiences. The four patterns were all rated low to medium on support by youths and clinicians in Study 2. Youths found the avoiding pattern to be more supportive than clinicians, and girls and older youths differed from boys and younger youths in their evaluation of the consenting pattern. Conclusions: The results of the two studies highlight the importance of training group leaders in child-centered communication and the ability to facilitate communication patterns experienced as supportive by youths.