Foundations of Group Counseling

Give prospective counselors a solid foundation for group counseling with a practical, application-based approach
Foundations of Group Counseling offers a broad perspective on group work and balances major issues and essential knowledge with practical guidelines and how-to strategies. Chapters written by expert scholars cover many topics in-depth that are often ignored by comparable books. Separate chapters provide thorough coverage of group work and addictions, group work with children, groups for adolescents, groups with older adults, and facilitating groups with challenging member behaviors. Combining practice, research, and theory, this unique text offers students the tools and strategies they need for successful group work practice.

About our Authors

Editor David Capuzzi, PhD, NCC, LPC is a counselor educator and member of the core faculty in mental health counseling at Walden University and professor emeritus at Portland State University. Previously, he served as an affiliate professor in the Department of Counselor Education, Counseling Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services at Pennsylvania State University and scholar in residence in counselor education at Johns Hopkins University. He is past president of the American Counseling Association (ACA), formerly the American Association for Counseling and Development and past chair of both the ACA Foundation and the ACA Insurance Trust.

From 1980 to 1984, Dr. Capuzzi was editor of The School Counselor. He has authored several textbook chapters and monographs on the topic of preventing adolescent suicide and is coeditor and author with Dr. Larry Golden of Helping Families Help Children: Family Interventions with School Related Problems (1986) and Preventing Adolescent Suicide (1988). He coauthored and edited with Douglas R. Gross Youth at Risk: A Prevention Resource for Counselors, Teachers, and Parents (1989, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2014); Introduction to the Counseling Profession (1991, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, and 2013); Introduction to Group Work (1992, 1998, 2002, 2006, and 2010); and Counseling and Psychotherapy: Theories and Interventions (1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2011). His other texts are Approaches to Group Work: A Handbook for Practitioners (2003), Suicide Across the Life Span (2006), and Sexuality Issues in Counseling, the last coauthored and edited with Larry Burlew. He has authored or coauthored articles in several ACA-related journals.

A frequent speaker and keynoter at professional conferences and institutes, Dr. Capuzzi has also consulted with a variety of school districts and community agencies interested in initiating prevention and intervention strategies for adolescents at risk for suicide. He has facilitated the development of suicide prevention, crisis management, and postvention programs in communities throughout the United States; provides training on the topics of youth at risk and grief and loss; and serves as an invited adjunct faculty member at other universities as time permits.

An ACA fellow, he is the first recipient of ACA’s Kitty Cole Human Rights Award and a recipient of the Leona Tyler Award in Oregon. In 2010, he received ACA’s Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person. In 2011, he was named a distinguished alumni of the College of Education at Florida State University, and in 2016 he received the Locke/Paisley Mentorship award from the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision.

Editor Mark D. Stauffer, PhD, NCC is a core faculty member in the clinical mental health counseling program at Walden University. He specialized in couples, marriage and family counseling at Portland State University and in counselor education and Supervision at Oregon State University. He has worked in the Portland area in Oregon at crisis centers and other nonprofit organizations working with individuals, couples, families, and groups, often with homeless and at-risk populations.

Dr. Stauffer has worked with groups and group work in the realm of mental health, counseling, counselor education, and supervision, at the associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral levels of higher education. Dr. Stauffer was a Chi Sigma Iota International Leaders in Counselor Education fellow and was also awarded the Emerging Leaders Training Grant by the American Counseling Association. Dr. Stauffer has served as cochair of the American Counseling Association International Committee and serves as president of the Association for Humanistic Counseling during 2018 to 2019.

In addition to this textbook on group counseling with Dr. Capuzzi, Dr. Stauffer has coedited several other textbooks in the counseling field: Counseling and Psychotherapy: Theories and Interventions (2017); Career Counseling: Foundations, Perspectives, and Applications (2006, 2012); Foundations of Addictions Counseling (2008, 2012, 2016); Foundations of Couples, Marriage and Family Counseling (2015); and Human Growth and Development Across the Life Span: Applications for Counselors (2016).