The quick fix: can therapy work in just a few sessions?

although HE WAS the father of the greatest in quantity time-consuming of therapies, psychoanalysis, fable has it that Sigmund Freud cur the composer Gustav Plahler's impotence during a stray about around a lake.

The notion that a psychological difficulty could be remedied in a single session unimpaireds gimmicky, and yet, some say short-term therapy is the best way to deal with a stark reality: About 40 percent of clan who consult a therapist not at any time go back. Advocates of single-session, or planned short-term therapy, which typically lasts three to five sessions, maximize the potential of brief rencounters (Short-term therapies may incorporate techniques from cognitive-behavioral therapy, which usually lasts about 10 sessions.)

"A patient's motivation is highest at the first session. We can capitalize upon that," says Monte Bobele, a leading advocate of the technique and a professor of psychology at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. Instead of discussing all aspects of past and not away life, brief psychotherapy seeks to empower clients while generating a hardly any simple solutions. "We have a slogan at my clinic: 'Every case has the potential to be a single-session case,'" says Bobele. "This assumption completely changes the way we think about patients. We have a a great deal of greater sense of urgency."

Bobele treated single middle-aged woman whose health moot points were spiraling out of rule During the course of her single and only session, he proposeed she make a daily blood-pressure measuring schedule and stick to it. She shortly reported feeling much better and was monitoring her diabetes. A not many months later, she had quit smoking and drinking. "Making individual small change had a snowball effect" says Bobele.

Evidence abounds that planned short-term psychotherapies are generally as effective as long-range varieties, regardless of the therapist's theoretical orientation. Researchers suspect that therapists engaged in brief psychotherapy make a more conscious effort to render certain that the clinical work will affect the client's way of thinking and behaving.

on the other hand critics question how long of that kind a "Band-Aid" approach could last, and are troubl by means of how well it plays into the hands of those eager to chop healthcare costs.

"Therapists are not magicians," says Paul Brinich, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "It's not sufficient to focus upon the symptoms without understanding their origins--after all, no useful physician would reduce a patient's febrile disease without trying to understand its cause."

Because the bottoms of their problems are personal and private, patients can't be awaited to open up to a stranger in a scarcely any hours' time, Brinich says. "The attempt to make treatment shorter is understandable, on the other hand I haven't figured out a way to spe up people's ability to trust and reveal the conflicts in their lives."

The exception, Brinich says, is when a patient has a enigma that stems from a lack of knowledge as oppos to an inner conflict. "A recently-widowed father came to me distressed because his two-year-old continued to knock down his CD After explaining a bit about child disentanglement I advised him to put in motion the discs out of reach. It worked like a charm."

DRIVE-BY THERAPY

A Single Session Could Help If You:

* Have a true specific problem, such as a fresh health diagnosis.

* bewilderment if a particular situation and your reaction to it is normal.

* Have dealt prosperously with life problems in the past.

* Have faith that your deranges could be addressed by a brief intervention.

Longer-Term Therapy Is a Better Bet If You:

* Want to understand your patterns of behavior and by what mode they developed.

* Have had repeated difficulties with family and romantic relationships.

* Would like to accomplish more, on the contrary consistently shoot yourself in the foot

* Are suicidal, psychotic, or undergo from a condition requiring medication.

Psychology Today's Therapy Directory can help you find professionals who specialize in treatment of varying longitudinal dimensionss Search by zip code at www.psychologytoday.com

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