Read the Group Dynamic case and answer the following question.

Questions

What can you tell about the nature of the communication and interaction patterns in the group?

Jim is a social worker at Horizons. He provides individual and group therapy in one of their outpatient programs. Most of Jim's clients have significant histories of committing violent crimes. The majority of them have spent time in prison. The purpose of the specific program he works in is to help clients cope with their mental health and substance abuse issues, which are factors that have played significant roles in their violent criminal behavior.

One of the groups that Jim leads is for female offenders with histories of violent behavior. The group consists of 10 members, although Jim prefers his groups to have eight members. Even though these clients are mandated by the legal system to comply with all treatment requirements, including attending group, rarely do all members show up. The group started five sessions ago and is open ended, although actual turnover in the group is anticipated to be relatively low. On most days, between five and seven women show up to the group. A core group of four have attended each of the first sessions.

Jim starts each week by asking the women how they are doing, and if anyone would like to share what happened during the week. He believes that this helps the members of his group take ownership of their own treatment. For the past two weeks, members have not spoken in response to his invitation. He got the sense that Carol wanted to share, but that something stopped her. He remembers a few weeks prior, when Carol was sharing about her incest, she suddenly stopped sharing in the middle of her story. When she stopped, she averted her eyes from one side of the group. One of the members of the group appeared to be staring at her very intently, with a smile on her face that Jim perceived as odd.

Jim decided to conduct a check-in round to see how the members were doing, to get them to share at least some information, and to break what he perceived to be tension in the room. Jim decided to start his round so that it ended on Jill, the woman who was staring so intently on Carol while she spoke of her incest. Jim asked the members to rate how they were feeling and doing this past week on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being fantastic, 1 being terrible. The majority of the women in the group reported numbers between 3 and 6. Tomika, who suffers from bipolar disorder, reported a 2. Jill reported a 9. When the round ended, Jim asked Tomika if she would like to share about why she scored her week so low. Scanning the group to gauge the responses of the members, Jim noticed that several members were looking at Jill, and that they were shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. Tomika seemed to look at Jill before deciding whether she wanted to share or not. Jill immediately said, "Well, I don't think we should talk about people who had bad weeks. I mean, I had a great week, and I think I want to talk about it. Why do we always have to focus on the garbage? I mean, I had a messed up week in some ways, but that's life, why should we talk about it, you know?" Jim thanked Jill for speaking up and told her while he understood her feelings about discussing negative events, and that it was sometimes very painful, he believed that sometimes people need to get things off their chests and get feedback about things so they can change them. Betsy, a young women with a history of sexual abuse, starts to laugh uncontrollably. She said that she had the funniest thing happen to her during the week, and something Jill said had reminded her of this. She got up from her chair and quickly started to do an impression of a friend. As Carol began to cry, Jill started to get up to leave the group. Jim asked for everyone to sit down and relax for a few minutes. He said that he felt that the group was going through a hard period, and that it was important to figure out what was going on. He first asked the group if they would take a few minutes to sit in silence and try to "get ourselves together." Jill and Betsy sat down and the group slipped into momentary silence.