Group psychoeducation is a flexible therapeutic approach which is often carried out as part of rehabilitation for people with mental disorders. This includes treatment in open psychiatric wards. Its main purpose is to inform patients of their disease and possible treatments, as well as to provide support in coping with their condition. Within such group, an individual can achieve progress due to therapeutic factors that occur in all psychotherapeutic groups. By recognising their benefits, the therapist can focus on promoting those factors within the group which are more effective in achieving change of its members. In the survey, we wanted to examine to what extent the effects of holistic treatment in an open psychiatric ward are reflected in the mental state of patients at the time of their discharge from hospital treatment, as well as what were the important therapeutic factors in such group. We included 63 patients hospitalized in an open psychiatric ward. We compared their mental states based on whether they attended the group two or three times of at least four times. We found that holistic treatment in an open psychiatric seems effective upon discharge for both groups, although we could not assess how much the actual psychoeducational support group contributed to this. Most female participants recognised the benefit of the group for achieving their treatment goals. As a result, we could talk about the emergence of therapeutic factors of altruism, cohesiveness, social and interpersonal learning, catharsis, offering hope and other existential factors. For future research, it would be good to adjust the questionnaire as regards the effectiveness of group psychotherapeutic treatment, to check how much group treatment contributes to the treatment of an individual and how the mental state of patients changes after they have been discharged from hospital treatment.
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