What’s New in Psychology?

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Training Course Found Helpful to Students    

Jim Windell

           Of all the lasting impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the most significant for psychologists and other mental health practitioners is the way clinical services are provided.

           The pandemic required a sudden shift from in person to online service delivery for most mental health clinicians. They had to learn how to use teletherapy platforms and offer therapy from a remote location.

           While teletherapy had some advantages, as many therapists discovered, it also came with certain drawbacks. For instance, therapists might feel an emotional distance from clients during treatment sessions. And crisis situations may make therapists feel less in control.

           Despite the handicaps of doing online treatment, clinicians have adapted to using teletherapy as a mode of service delivery and as many admit they are unlikely to go back to having an in-person practice. However, online treatment has called for new models of therapy, especially in crisis situations. One of those models that has been picked up by many clinicians is solution-focused brief therapy.

           Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) has a strengths-based focus which has been found effective across treatment sites, presenting problems, and demographics for crisis care. It is a flexible model that adapts to different settings and research shows it is useful to treat adult as well as for emotional, behavioral, and academic problems for youths in schools and family services. Guided by several tenets, therapists utilize SFBT in a way that is most useful for them through the process of listen, select, build. Listen, select, build is a fluid structure of conducting therapy with SFBT. It guides the clinician through assessment, while listening to moments of difference, selecting them, and then building collaboratively with the client their preferred future.

           Most important, SFBT has been found to be a teachable model that can be effectively implemented when needed. In training clinicians across disciplines in SFBT, several stated that despite having different preferred models of therapy, they did not have to significantly change their philosophy toward client growth to successfully implement SFBT. Clinicians can implement elements of strengths-based therapy without feeling as though they are losing their own unique style. As indicated in a recent article in the Journal of Social Work Education, it is believed that SFBT offers a strong foundation and transferability to telehealth platforms regardless of therapeutic modality preference, making it ideal for integration in crisis care.

           The stated purpose of the article in the Journal of Social Work Education is to present recommendations for applying solution-focused language in teletherapy practice and to provide ethical, evidenced based care for clients in crisis. A clinical vignette is used to illustrate the application of solution focused brief therapy for working with clients in crisis. Future directions and limitations are discussed.

           The authors of the article discuss a 14-week online training model that included a clinical weekly seminar augmenting social work students’ practice classes focusing on solution-focused brief therapy; group supervision and case consultations; and a field placement implementing SFBT. A co-therapy model was implemented where students worked in pairs for additional support, processing, and preparation. Process evaluation using focus groups with social work students, and their process recordings and weekly supervision logs revealed that there was increased students’ competence in using SFBT in their telemental health practice and strong collaboration with peers in the virtual training with group cohesion and mutual support.

           The study concludes that the online training program provides an effective, short-term, online training approach for clinical students. Furthermore, the authors believed that this SFBT telemental training met a critical need both for students and for children and families during the height of the pandemic. It provided meaningful interpersonal connections with peers and clients, in addition to the development of clinical practice skills in the online environment.

            To read the original article, find it with this reference:          

Lee, Y., Cook, K., & Bronstein, L. R. (2025). Solution-Focused Telemental Health: A new approach for social work field education. Journal of Social Work Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2024.2420093