Why We Built a Practice Around Community
Does group therapy work? Yes: in the research literature, group therapy produces outcomes comparable to individual therapy for many conditions, including depression and anxiety (Burlingame & Strauss, in Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, 7th ed., 2021). We built The Community around that finding and one more: disconnection itself is a measurable health problem, with half of US adults reporting loneliness (U.S. Surgeon General Advisory, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” 2023). This page is the full case, with every number sourced.
Does group therapy work? The research says yes, and loneliness is the reason it matters.
- About 1 in 2 US adults reports experiencing loneliness.
- Social disconnection is associated with a 26–29% increased risk of premature death; an association, not a cause.
- The Harvard Study of Adult Development, running more than 85 years, found relationship satisfaction at 50 predicted physical health at 80 better than cholesterol levels.
- Group therapy outcomes are comparable to individual therapy for many conditions, including depression and anxiety.
- Belonging-based interventions show a moderate to strong positive effect on health outcomes in research reviews.
How Widespread Is Loneliness?
U.S. SURGEON GENERAL ADVISORY, 2023
AGES 15–24, 2003–2020
About one in two American adults reports experiencing loneliness, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” Read that again against the size of the country: the advisory describes disconnection not as a niche complaint but as a condition affecting roughly half the adult population. A prevalence like that changes what a clinician should assume in the room. If one in two adults is lonely, then loneliness is not an unusual finding to be screened for occasionally; it is closer to the baseline condition a practice should expect to meet, and a treatment model that never touches a client’s connections is leaving half the picture untreated by design.
The trend line among young people is steeper. Per the same advisory, in-person time with friends among people aged 15–24 declined roughly 70% from 2003 to 2020. That is not a statistic about screens or about any single generation’s habits; it is a measurement of the raw material of friendship, hours physically together, draining out of the years when people historically learned how to be close to other people. A therapy practice that treats individuals one hour a week while the other 167 hours grow lonelier is working against the current. That arithmetic is the first reason this practice is organized around community and groups rather than around the appointment book alone.
What Does Disconnection Do to Health?
Increased risk of premature death associated with social disconnection
The research treats disconnection as a health exposure, not just a feeling. A widely cited meta-analysis found social disconnection associated with a 26–29% increased risk of premature death (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, et al., Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2015). More recently, a meta-analysis of cohort studies covering more than 2.2 million people linked social isolation to increased mortality risk (Wang et al., Nature Human Behaviour, 2023).
Notice the words “associated” and “linked.” These are cohort studies, which watch people over time; they show a pattern, not that isolation is the cause of early death, and we won’t claim more than that. What the studies establish is that disconnection keeps showing up next to worse health outcomes, across millions of people, in study after study, at effect sizes large enough that public health bodies now treat it as a priority.
People covered by cohort studies linking social isolation to increased mortality risk
For a clinical practice, the practical question isn’t whether the association is causal. It’s simpler: if connection tracks with health this consistently, across both a 2015 meta-analysis and a 2023 one covering more than 2.2 million people, what does responsible care do about the connection side of the ledger? Our answer is structural rather than rhetorical: build deeper, more substantial connection work into the model itself, as a group room next to the individual room, instead of leaving it as advice given at the end of a session.
What an 85-Year Harvard Study Found
OF ADULT DEVELOPMENT
Relationship satisfaction at 50 outpredicted cholesterol levels for physical health at 80.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development has been following its participants for more than 85 years, which makes it one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever conducted. Its most quoted finding, reported by the Harvard Gazette (Mineo, 2017): how satisfied people were with their relationships at age 50 predicted their physical health at 80 better than their cholesterol levels did. Sit with the comparison the study itself invites: a lab value everyone’s doctor tracks, outpredicted by a question about who you love and who loves you well. The study also found that strong social support is associated with less mental deterioration with age.
The people who ran the study talk about it in blunter language than the data tables use. Robert Waldinger, the study’s director, has said loneliness “kills” and compared its power to smoking or alcoholism. That comparison is Waldinger’s own, and we share it as his view, not as a claim of ours. George Vaillant, who led the study for decades, summarized the key finding as “relationships, relationships, relationships.” An 85-year study is rare precisely because it can watch a whole life instead of a slice of one; what it watched turned out to hinge on who people had, not just what they had.
For a therapy practice, the finding lands as a design question: if relationship satisfaction at midlife is that predictive, then helping people build and repair relationships isn’t adjacent to health care. It’s inside it.
Does Group Therapy Actually Work?
Group therapy outcomes vs. individual, for many conditions including depression and anxiety
Moderate to strong effect of belonging interventions on health outcomes
For many conditions, yes, and at a level that surprises people who assume group is individual therapy’s cheaper cousin. The standard reference here is Burlingame and Strauss’s chapter in Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (7th ed., 2021), which reviews the outcome literature and finds group therapy comparable to individual therapy for many conditions, including depression and anxiety. “Comparable” is the ceiling of the claim and we will stay under it: group is as effective for many conditions, not all, and fit still matters, which is why every group here begins with a screening conversation.
There’s a second research thread that matters just as much for a practice named The Community. Interventions built specifically on belonging and social identity show a moderate to strong positive effect on health outcomes in research reviews (g ≈ 0.66; Steffens et al., Health Psychology Review, 2021). In plain terms: belonging isn’t only the pleasant byproduct of a good group. In the research, it behaves like an active ingredient, which is precisely the mechanism a therapy group is built to deliver: a room you belong to, on purpose, with a clinician keeping the belonging honest. That pairing, established comparability plus a measured belonging effect, is the clinical footing under this practice’s name.
What Doesn't This Research Prove?
Being honest about the limits is part of the case. The mortality findings are associations, not proof of cause: nothing here says isolation leads to early death or that joining a group prevents illness. The Harvard findings describe what predicted health across one long-running study, not what will happen in any one life. And “comparable outcomes” means group holds its own for many conditions, not that it fits every person, which is why every group starts with a screening conversation.
What the research does support, taken together, is a narrower and more useful conclusion: connection tracks with health, belonging-based interventions show real measured effects, and group therapy is a legitimate first-class clinical intervention rather than an add-on. That is exactly the weight this practice puts on it: enough to build around, and no more than the studies can carry. If you ever hear a stronger claim from us, hold us to this page.
You're Always Outnumbered
Grey Donnell, The Community’s founder, is a Certified Addiction Counselor, and addiction work is where the limits of the individual hour show up first and most brutally. Insight gained on the couch on Tuesday has to survive Friday night alone. What he watched, year after year, was that change stuck when a client had a group: people who noticed the slide before the slip, who had heard the whole story and couldn’t be managed with a polished version of it.
The conclusion he carried out of addiction work wasn’t that individual therapy fails. It was that individual therapy alone is outnumbered, and that the group is where change gets rehearsed enough times to hold. The Community is that conclusion, built into a practice: a place where the group isn’t the referral you get when individual work stalls, but the second half of the plan from the start.
How Do the Two Rooms Work Together?
The Community’s model is integrated: individual therapy and group therapy together, each doing the work the other can’t. That makes it distinct from two familiar alternatives, group as an optional add-on bolted to individual care, and group-centered models where group replaces individual therapy. We think both of those get something right and stop short. The add-on model undervalues the group by treating it as overflow seating for the real work; the replacement model gives up the depth that only one-on-one work reaches. Integration keeps both, deliberately, and prices the group room deliberately low so the second room is never the one that gets cut for budget reasons.
Discovery
Discovery happens in the individual room, where one therapist can go slowly and deeply into your story.
Implementation
Implementation happens in the group room, where the new behavior meets real people with real reactions, at practice stakes instead of life stakes. Old stories are rewritten in real time as individuals see that the group accepts their new, sensitive, and formerly hidden aspects.
Insight that has survived contact
What the two rooms produce together is the thing neither produces alone: insight that has already survived contact with other humans, and not just the humans being paid or reenacting all-nurturing, all-caring, perfect parents. The individual side of that loop is described on our individual therapy page.
Come Practice It, Not Just Read It
If the numbers on this page describe your life, the invitation is simple: come practice community instead of just reading the case for it. Grey puts the endpoint of the whole model in his own words, from his time as a group member: “Through acceptance of the group, I find self-acceptance. And through acceptance of myself I find acceptance of group members.”
Seven groups are enrolling now, open to adults 18+ with or without a therapist here, each starting with a single screening conversation with its facilitator. The full catalog, formats, facilitators, and prices are on the groups page, and for adult individual clients the group room comes built into the work rather than bolted onto it. Screening for a group is a conversation with that group’s facilitator; screening for individual work is the short conversation that follows our same-day response on weekdays (by phone or email).
Frequently Asked Questions
For many conditions, including depression and anxiety, research finds group therapy outcomes comparable to individual therapy (Burlingame & Strauss, in Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook, 7th ed., 2021). “Comparable for many conditions” is the ceiling: it doesn’t mean group fits every person or every diagnosis, which is why every group at The Community starts with a screening conversation.
No. The Community’s model is integrated: for our adult clients, individual and group work together, with discovery happening one-on-one and implementation happening in the group room. Group is not a replacement for individual therapy here, and it’s not a bolt-on either. People who want group without individual therapy at The Community can enroll group-only and keep their outside therapist.
We’re not faith-based clinical services. We practice spiritual integration: clinical care that takes the spiritual side of being human seriously. In practice that means your spiritual life, devout, doubting, or absent, is welcome material in the work, never a requirement for it.
Group isn’t the right room for everyone, and we say so early. Active psychosis, active thought disorders, or inability to practice emotional containment mean a group can’t safely hold the work, and the facilitator will make a warm referral out instead. The screening conversation that starts every group exists to catch this before the first session, not after it. If it slips through, appropriate referrals will be made when the necessity becomes clear. Everything else, nerves included, is workable; being unsure you belong in a group is not on the exclusion list.
Nobody can promise that, and this page won’t. The research establishes associations between connection and health, comparable outcomes for group therapy across many conditions, and moderate to strong measured effects for belonging-based interventions in research reviews. Those are strong reasons to build connection into treatment, but not a promise about any one person’s health. Grey puts it simply: environment is stronger than will. In his view, when people surround themselves with others in search of honesty, healing, and wholeness, they become better equipped to practice and receive.
Call 404-590-2993, email welcome@communityatlanta.com, or send the contact form; you’ll get a same-day response on weekdays (by phone or email). From there it’s a short screening conversation, a therapist or group match, and a free 15-minute consult. If you’re heading for a group, the screening conversation is with that group’s facilitator.
The Research Says Connection Tracks With Health
The research says connection tracks with health and that groups do real clinical work. The practice built on that research is one phone call away, at 320 Maxwell Road, Suite 300, downtown Alpharetta, with telehealth anywhere in Georgia.