The professional practitioner of the field, who may be called a sociotherapist or life enrichment therapist, sometimes called a clinical sociologist, is usually concurrently a member of another relevant profession: medical doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse, social worker, sociologist, criminologist, activity and recreational professionals, among others.
Clinical sociotherapy usually targets groups of children, youths, or elderly, employed in various settings such as treatment facilities or lifecare communities like nursing homes and are directly involved in case management and care planning.
Its main focus is the process of interpersonal relationships as a method of facilitating healthier living, rather than diagnosing intrapsychic psychopathology, and attempting to change it through coercion and analysis (psychology and psychotherapy).
For example, the public health insurance system of Germany offered a uniquely German definition in order to subsidize treatment by sociotherapeutic professionals.
Designed by the author to help prevent relapse and rearrest of parolees and probationers at a community mental health center in 1986, this text outlines an evidence-based, twenty-four session group program created for adult clients with coexisting Substance Use Disorders and the persistent problems of aggressiveness, breaking rules and laws, carelessness, dishonesty, impulsivity, indifference, irresponsibility and irritability.
In These settings the working definition of sociotherapy is the practice of promoting healthy growth and living by facilitating therapeutic communities, personal relationships and positive peer culture.
[10] Applying the rule of epoché we set aside our personal initial biases and prejudices in order to suspend expectations and assumptions.
When it comes to a socio-therapeutic relationship the rule of epoché sets aside any initial theories with regard to what is presented in the meeting between therapist and client.
The rule of description implies immediate and specific observations, abstaining from interpretations or explanations, especially those formed from the application of any clinical theory superimposed over the circumstances of experience.