Group Work Reflection: Experience Leading Depression Session

This report presents a reflective account of a student's experience leading a group session for individuals suffering from depression. The student details the preparation, challenges, and leadership skills employed during the session, which aimed to facilitate interaction and provide support to the participants. The report highlights the importance of empathy, active listening, and adapting to different leadership styles. It discusses the challenges encountered, such as managing individuals with varying levels of anxiety and the potential risk of suicidal ideation. The student reflects on learning from the experience, including the application of group theories and leadership models. The report also emphasizes the significance of consistent behavior, empathy, and the ability to control one's emotions in such a setting. The student concludes by expressing a desire to incorporate these skills in future group leadership endeavors.

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Group Work
[Type the document subtitle]
3/22/2020
student name

Group Work 1
Group Work
Reflection is one of the affective ways to communicate the experience so as to mould
it to a learning or meaning, so as to improvise the actions taken in near future. Group sessions
or group activities are one of the ways to enhance interactivity among individuals and
understand the case more efficiently through management of a group. A group is part of
individuals working together for the same objective, where it is important to manage groups
and the changing demand. I have to conduct a group session for specific group of people
suffering from depression. The major discussion aspect from the group session included
factors responsible for depression for students and how to overcome depression. Therefore it
can be said that it was an interactive session so as to decrease the inciting, stress and help the
people with depression to share their unfortunate depressive experience and overcome with
their Anxiety (Dosser & Nicol, 2016).
Prior to this experience I was not sure if I will be able to lead a group, coordinate
among individuals and communicate effectively in a group. I was curious to attend the
session as this was a new experience to me and maybe helpful in my near future. This
experience will be including a leadership experience with the group, where I will be learning
and practising new group theories (Cherry, 2018).
The experience of leading a group session on depression initiated with getting the
seating arrangement is done; I was proactively prepared for the arrangements so as to make
the session more effective for the participants. The members present in the group sessions
were suffering from depression, which makes it a major challenge for me as a leader because
a person with depression may or may not able to understand the interactivity within the group
session and needs to consider additional attention to each member present in the group. I
decided to consider various activities, which was affected plea taken by the members

Group Work 2
however there were some challenges as some of the members were resisting to take part in
some activities due to anxiety (Manning & Curtis, 2015).
The communication be a direction that I decided to perform was member to the group
as it is important to get information or members to share their experience of depression or
problem they have been faced or with the field due to this issue to the group. This may
decrease their stress, burden and due to increase in interactivity and sharing thoughts and
feelings may help the person overcoming depression (Griffith & Connelly, 2015). The major
challenge was loss of interest of the individuals in the activities performed as this is one of
the major symptoms of depression and it is very difficult to get an individual cope with
depression and increase interest in participating in activities. Another major challenge during
the group session was a risk factor for an individual to talk about suicide and a feeling to kill
oneself. One of the major affected depressions is the increasing risk factor for individual to
suicide. Therefore during the session there were various individuals who were sharing their
thoughts related to the hopelessness and their willingness to kill one or harm oneself. This
may impact other members of the group, and the situation was difficult to manage (Jesus,
2015).
The major learning from the experience, and challenges faced during the group
sessions include different leadership styles to be adopted. The content that was discussed
through the groups sessions included the symptoms that the patients have identified or
experience which may vary with age and gender what discussed in the group. Other than this
the types of depression were also identified and discussed which included the risk factors and
factors that are responsible for increase in depression (Jo & Lee, 2017). After the
communication of member to the group I being a leader also communicated to the Group to
make all individual feel better and to advise them to cope with the depression this included
reaching out to each individual understanding their level of depression and making them

Group Work 3
understand the effective treatments and when they could reach out to a professional for a help
the treatment may include medication and therapies. The leadership behaviour I possess, I
Reflected empathy, active listening and humour as some of the skills that were used during
the group session (Hill, 2016).
The major learning from the experience also included the group theory is that may
help me in future in leading similar group sessions. Toseland and rivas provide definition to a
group work as aimed towards accomplishing the activity and goal directed activities. As per
this theory the members must have the opportunity to share their feelings, ideas, believes,
thoughts and must share their experience to engage in the directions. Truth is the group
members are able to develop sense of belonging and feel of mutual interdependence. As per
this theory there are four major practical tasks that is offered by the theorist to understand
system of interrelated elements in a group. This includes integration which is sure that
distinct members of the group are able to fit together. This reflects decision related to choice
of members during the group session. Adaption is another task that make sure if the group are
able to change with the environmental demands. Pattern maintenance is another task that is to
ensure if the group are able to sustain their identity, basic aim and procedures. And lastly goal
attainment which makes sure that the group are able to achieve and pursue their tasks (Fook,
2018).
Another model that could be helpful in my future group sessions are leaders model
behaviour which was learnt during this experience. As per this model it is important for the
leader to understand group appropriate behaviour rather than showing do recovery, and role
of mentor. This reflects that instead of being a mentor to the group of people the action taken
by a litre will include active listening way, providing appropriate feedback to the individuals,
present creole city to understand others’ emotions and feelings. Another major learning
through this model included, awareness for leader to self-disclosure. Only to meet needs of

Group Work 4
the group when it is task related requirement, thereafter thoughtful consideration and
discussion will be included with the supervisor (Schon, 2017).
Moreover from the experience the leadership traits that I will be considered while
leading a group would include constancy. This reflects the stimuli with in frequent changes
and small help to the participants recovering from emotional turbulence. Being a leader it is
important to emphasise security and constancy through various particular behaviours. For
example being a group leader it is important to be at the same place within the group I need
to respond eventually and consistently to individual behaviour spoil active listening. I will
consider maintaining consistent boundaries and clear boundaries such as particular initiation
an end, ground rules for sharing the field and speaking and most importantly standards for
comportment. Moreover when a leader is leading a group it is important to understand the
relevance of dressing as well which will reflect the predictability and leader’s personality or
interest in group (Manning & Curtis, 2015).
Another learning that I need to emphasise and include as a major part of the group
leading is empathy it is important to control your own emotions especially when the group is
facing from some social problems like depression in the experience. This reflects the ability
to identify feelings of an individual and at the same time remaining away at recording to the
others feeling which may be different from own. In order to get individual scope with the
depression it is important to project empathy which is one of the important skill I would like
to enhance and implement in next group sessions as well. Empathetic listening is quite
different from active listening which reflects close attention to the field and statements
communicated by every individual in the group. This provides a support for individuals to
increase the recovery process. This may also include knowledgeable and supportive
behaviour towards the group (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2020).

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Thus, I would like to conclude that the purpose of the group session was to hep group
members to cope with their problem of depressions. This included setting group mood
through use of humour, the anxiety level of individual was controlled through various
activities perform and making the interactive session. There were various challenges like risk
of conflicts among people in group, which was handled by offering each individual a change
to communicate and share their feelings. It was good to feel that I was able to help some of
the people facing sever issues of depression and also unable to share their true feelings with
someone. Thus I would like to include various group leading skills in my near future.

Group Work 6
References
Cherry, K. (2018). Understanding the Trait Theory of Leadership . Retrieved 08 01, 2018,
from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-trait-theory-of-leadership-2795322
Dosser, I., & Nicol, J. (2016). Understanding reflective practice. Nursing Standard, 30(36).
Fook, J. (2018). REFLECTIVE MODELS AND FRAMEWORKS IN PRACTICE .
Methodologies for Practice Research: Approaches for Professional Doctorates, 1, 57.
Griffith, J., & Connelly, S. (2015). Leader–follower interpersonal emotion management:
Managing stress by person-focused and emotion-focused emotion management.
Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 22(1), 5-20.
Hill, N. (2016). Empowering leadership and effective collaboration in geographically
dispersed teams. Personnel Psychology, 69(1), 159-198.
Jesus, D. (2015). "The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in knowledge management
practices and innovation.". Journal of Business Research, 68(2), 360-370.
Jo, E., & Lee, D. (2017). The Effects of Personality Traits on Stress Level, Stressor, and
Stress Coping Style: Focused on S High School Students. Journal of the Society of
Korea Industrial and Systems Engineering, 40(3), 107-115.
Manning, G., & Curtis, K. (2015). The Art of Leadership (5 ed.). Sydney: McGraw Hill.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. (2020). 6 Group Leadership, Concepts, and Techniques. Retrieved from
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64211/
Schon, D. (2017). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. London:
Routledge.

Group Work 7