Therapeutic Groups at GATE

GATE offers clinician-directed therapeutic groups for children, teens, and adults. Depending on the group’s purpose and participants, sessions may use roleplay, gameplay, creative arts, structured activities, or traditional talk-based group therapy. Each group provides a shared experience while allowing the clinical team to adapt activities, pacing, and reflection around each participant’s therapeutic goals, strengths, and readiness.

These are therapy groups—not recreational gaming clubs, art classes, or standardized social-skills classes. In game- and roleplay-based groups, the game is not the treatment. The game creates a structured setting in which participants can express themselves, encounter relational patterns, experiment with new responses, and practice carrying what they discover into everyday life.

From Individual Work to Group Readiness

Group therapy can serve as a carefully planned next step within a client’s continuum of care. Individual therapy provides a private setting where the clinician and client can develop a therapeutic relationship, understand the client’s personal story, identify meaningful goals, and observe how the client approaches emotions, relationships, uncertainty, conflict, and change.

Before recommending a GATE group, we generally work with the prospective participant in an individual storytelling, play, or therapeutic setting. This helps us determine whether the person is ready to bring their developing skills and personal narrative into a shared experience.

A group may become appropriate when a client is ready to practice with peers, encounter perspectives outside the individual therapy relationship, and apply emerging abilities in a more complex relational environment. Group participation may supplement individual therapy or serve as a step-down service when clinically appropriate. It is not automatically the right next step for every client.

How We Determine Group Readiness

Before joining, each prospective participant completes an individual consultation or readiness process with a GATE clinician. The purpose is to understand the participant’s goals, determine whether the group can safely and meaningfully support those goals, and consider how the person may experience the group’s members, themes, demands, and level of structure.

The readiness process may consider:

• Ability to participate safely in a shared environment
• Capacity to tolerate attention being divided among group members
• Responses to uncertainty, frustration, waiting, disagreement, and changing plans
• Ability to communicate needs or accept support
• Willingness to respect other participants’ boundaries and privacy
• Current emotional and behavioral support needs
• Narrative readiness for the group’s themes and style of roleplay
• Compatibility with the group’s age range, developmental needs, and interpersonal composition
• Whether individual therapy, family work, or another level of care should continue alongside the group

Admission is based on clinical fit rather than order of inquiry. A consultation does not guarantee placement. A clinician may recommend additional individual preparation, a different group, continued individual therapy, or another service.

Small Groups with Close Clinical Support

GATE intentionally keeps groups small. Our goal is to preserve the relational benefits of group therapy while allowing the team to remain closely attentive to each participant’s emotional, interpersonal, and narrative experience.

In GATE’s roleplay-based programs, when the group structure and enrollment support it, we aim to use a licensed clinician and a Mental Health Technician or trained game facilitator together. The clinician remains responsible for therapeutic direction, assessment, intervention, and integration. The supporting facilitator helps manage gameplay, materials, pacing, engagement, and individual support within the shared experience.

Groups facilitated by graduate clinical interns use the approved supervision and staffing structures of each intern’s placement.

This low participant-to-staff model allows the team to provide individualized attention while preserving the essential experience of participating in a group. It does not turn group therapy into one-to-one treatment; participants still practice sharing space, negotiating relationships, responding to peers, and contributing to a collective story.

How Therapeutic Roleplay Works

Relational Narrative Growth Therapy (RNGT) is GATE’s organizing therapeutic framework for adapting story, roleplay, relationships, challenge, and reflection around each participant’s readiness and treatment goals. RNGT describes how our clinicians plan, guide, and reflect on the shared story; it is GATE’s clinical approach, not a standalone treatment model. RNGT organizes GATE’s roleplay- and narrative-based clinical work; not every GATE group uses roleplay.

Current and Forming Groups

Two children’s groups are currently running, and interest lists are forming for additional teen and adult groups. Contact GATE for current availability, scheduling, and payment information.

Finding the Right Group

Placement considers age, goals, narrative readiness, support needs, and interpersonal fit. Groups are intentionally small, and different participants may work toward different therapeutic goals within the same shared story.

No previous roleplaying or gaming experience is required unless a specific group states otherwise. An individual therapeutic or readiness process normally occurs before placement. Group participation may supplement individual therapy or function as an appropriate step down in services.

Not every group is appropriate for every person. Availability and group composition may change. Privacy, boundaries, consent, and content expectations are reviewed before participation.

Reaching out begins the readiness process. An inquiry does not guarantee placement.