Time-Limited Therapy in a General Practice Setting

How to Help within Six Sessions

Time-limited therapy provides a specific set of skills that enable the counselor to cope successfully with the large number and wide range of referrals they can receive in primary care. This volume covers a range of difficulties commonly presented in primary careùsuch as anxiety, stress, bereavement, and depressionùand explains how problems not usually considered appropriate for working within a time-limited frameworkùsuch as eating disorders, medical complaints, and abuseùcan also be helped effectively. Integrating counseling skills with psychological knowledge, the author presents an outline of the psychological and physical aspects of each presentation followed by clear and concise guidelines about how time-limited therapy can be used efficiently and realistically in each case. Carefully chosen case studies illustrate the skills in action, while further chapters discuss the management and administration of a counseling service within primary care, as well as how a time-limited service can be evaluated. As general practitioners are increasingly capping the number of counseling sessions they can provide, time-limited therapy skills are becoming ever-more important to counselors working alongside GPs and with the clients they refer. This book will therefore be invaluable to all those who are working or who intend to work in a primary health care setting.