What is it about?
During wars, pandemics, and other large-scale emergencies, the moments when children and adolescents need therapy the most are often the moments when therapy becomes hardest to maintain. This article explores how therapy groups can preserve connection, emotional safety, and therapeutic continuity when sudden crises force a rapid transition from the therapy room to online meetings, and later back again. Drawing on years of clinical work with children and adolescents during repeated emergencies, the paper presents practical and conceptual principles for helping groups remain emotionally alive, cohesive, and developmentally meaningful even under conditions of disruption, uncertainty, and collective stress.
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Why is it important?
Children and adolescents are especially vulnerable to the emotional consequences of war, pandemics, and collective crises, yet these are often the very moments when therapeutic continuity is disrupted. Despite the growing use of online therapy, there is still limited clinical guidance regarding how child and adolescent therapy groups can transition between in-person and virtual settings while preserving cohesion, emotional safety, and meaningful therapeutic processes. This article addresses that gap by offering a clinical framework and practical principles for sustaining group therapy during emergencies, highlighting how transitions themselves can become opportunities for resilience, connection, and developmental growth.
Perspectives
As directors of a therapeutic center running 33 ongoing therapy groups for children, adolescents, and young adults, we have repeatedly faced the challenge of maintaining treatment continuity during the past six years of pandemics, wars, and recurring emergencies. Again and again, therapy groups were forced to move abruptly from the therapy room to Zoom, and later back again. Throughout these years, our clinical team accompanied hundreds of children and adolescents navigating this complex reality. These repeated transitions highlighted the urgent need for thoughtful clinical principles that can help therapists preserve cohesion, emotional safety, and meaningful therapeutic work during times of disruption. Our perspective is that such transitions should not be treated merely as compromises or emergency substitutes, but as therapeutic processes in themselves, processes that, when carefully held, can even foster resilience, flexibility, and growth.
Nathan (Netanel) Zingboim
We hope for a peaceful world without wars, natural dissasters, pandemics... But when the wind blows upon us all - We should make the endeavor to maintain the therapeutic connection. This article will help you in times of need, which we hope will never come.
Alon Wasserman
Haverim (=Friends, Hebrew). Group Therapy Center, Tel Aviv, Israel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: When the same wind blows on us all: Clinical principles for transitioning child therapy groups between in-person and virtual settings in times of crisis., Group Dynamics Theory Research and Practice, May 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/gdn0000250.
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