Single Session Therapy

Mental health workforce shortages combined with increased demand for services have required mental health professionals and organizations to devise innovative service delivery strategies. In emergencies and crises, the inability to offer multiple session treatment and follow-up for mental health often makes Single Session Therapy (SST) the only option. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, an evidenced-based pragmatic approach, is an ideal method to use in Single Session Therapy.

Solution-Focused Single Session Therapy provides an evidenced-based, trauma-informed practice that can be implemented in crisis situations. Single Session Therapy has potential applications as used in emergency triage, crisis call centrers, emergency settings, and where access to care can be poor, for example in the remote rural settings. The World Health Organization has proposed Single Session Therapy as a potential model when responding to the Psychosocial and Mental Health needs of people who have experienced trauma. In emergencies, Single Session Therapy can be offered as part of a specialized mental health crisis service (Miller 2010).

It has been found in 3-12 month follow-ups that in 58.6% of the presentations, a single session had been sufficient and led to improvement in the presenting problem.

In this course, compiled by Dr Ben Furman, an internationally known Solution-Focused Therapy expert and a bestselling author of books on the Solutions focused Therapy,  Single Session Therapy will be discussed and thoroughly explored. You will be presented with a number of techniques that will enable you to provide clinically effective Solution Focused Single Session Therapy.  SFT requires the clinician to view every interaction as an intervention.  Solution-Focused Single Session Therapy is intended to be pragmatic and based on the clients’ presenting concerns focusing on what the client has already done to cope and what the client wants, rather than exploring history or theories about root causes. The goal is for the client to leave with a plan and know they have the skills and resources available to move forward in a good enough way.

Solution-Focused Single Session Therapy promises to mitigate many of the access-to-service barriers in mental health organizations. It enhances the mental health delivery system, provides a solution to workforce mental health shortages, and improves the quality of care in the mental health system.

Research shows that the Solution Focused Single Session improves the positive therapeutic outcome  as it focuses on client’s strengths and resources, a solid therapeutic alliance, improves client’s motivation, and it continually assists in gathering feedback from the client while activating their own resources. Psychotherapy research findings suggest that most change occurs during the first couple of therapy sessions (Hansen & Lambert, 2002 & Seligman, 1995). The single-session model proposes that many people receive sufficient support from a single session with the offer of future single sessions if needed. A review of the clinical and research literature shows that between one-third and one-half of randomly selected clients seen in single-session psychotherapy report being sufficiently helped by the experience so that the therapeutic episode can be terminated (Bloom, 2001).