Focused Single‐Session Psychotherapy: A Review of the Clinical and Research Literature

Abstract

Since the initial examination of the scattered literature on single-session psychotherapy, more than 40 papers that address some aspect of this form of very brief psychotherapy have been located in two archival data sets (PsycINFO and MEDLINE). The literature consists of clinical overviews, program descriptions and case presentations, and a few uncontrolled and controlled outcome studies. Single-session psychotherapy has been practiced from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives with no evidence thus far that any specific perspective is superior to any other. Single-session psychotherapy has been found to be somewhat effective for intrapsychic difficulties, interpersonal conflicts, and as an adjunct treatment for medical disorders, and has been shown to be useful for the treatment of children and adolescents as well as adults. 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.

A comparison of walk-in counselling and the wait list model for delivering counselling services

“…Significant improvement in severity and frequency of presenting problem for the treatment group was reported compared to the control after 6 weeks. Reviews of these studies have concluded that SST may be helpful for some clients, but more rigorous research is needed (Bloom, 2001;Cameron, 2007;Campbell, 2012;authors, 2013;Hurn, 2005).…”

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“…Indeed, several descriptive reviews of SST and walk-in SST have concluded that while more experimental research is required in the area, these single-session approaches appear to be effective for a range of problems and can satisfy client expectations (Bloom, 2001;Cameron, 2007;Campbell, 2012;Hymmen et al, 2013). Although the use of a consultancy team is not a universal feature of all single-session therapeutic methods, like other brief methods (e.g., de Shazer, 1985;Selvini & Palazzoli, 1991), it is a characteristic of therapy that is commonplace to the majority of these approaches.…”

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“…They are also able to see more clients in a short period of time. Walk-in services thus fall into the category of brief interventions, which have consistently been shown to be effective (Bloom, 2001).…”