Key aspects of therapeutic change in residents of a prison therapeutic community: a focus group approach.

In an attempt to gain a person-centred perspective of therapeutic change, exploratory focus groups were conducted with men in Dovegate Prison's Therapeutic Community (TC). Residents identified change as a process comprising variability, gradual movement and differential paces. The process was seen to involve self-referential properties, interpersonal facets and challenges. Residents distinguished two significant change events: identifying aspects of the unknown and openness to receive help. Support is given to focus group methodology as a way of offering novel insights into experience of a TC as a process-orientated model of change, taking into account individual aspects and underlying facets of change.