Yes, I think Solution Focused Brief Therapy is the Best Method

We don’t want to start anything among our fellow therapists, but we’ve gotta say, when it comes to the most efficient way to do therapy, especially in today’s times, SFBT is the best method available, and we’ve got the proof to back it up.

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So today I’m going to try to answer the age old question which is, “Is Solution Focused Brief Therapy better than other approaches?” And for me, the answer is an emphatic “Yes.”

I want to give you two examples as to why I would say yes.

The first one is Solution Focused Brief Therapy is simply more efficient. I’m currently in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I traveled all the way here from Los Angeles, California. Now, can I get to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by driving? Of course I can. Can I get to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by walking? Eventually, yes. Could I sail around and get here? Yes. But the most efficient way to get from Los Angeles, California, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is to fly. That is, better. And I think a lot of people don’t know that there’s a much more efficient way of accomplishing a clinical goal. And Solution Focused Brief Therapy is by far the most efficient way of doing that.

The other thing I think about Solution Focused Brief Therapy is it respects the client’s humanness. So instead of focusing on the problem, we focus on the thing that makes humans human, which is a desire to have a brighter, better, more hope filled future. In other approaches we spend all of our time assessing problems, diagnosing problems, and trying to suggest an intervention that interferes with the problem. The issue I have with that is no one’s life is perfect. There’s no such thing as a perfect person. So that means if we are looking for problems so that we can solve them, we are always going to find them. Which would give us the perspective of always living in the prism of the problem. But if we focus on hopes and wishes and resources, dreams, joy, then we get to live from that perspective.

I heard somebody say the other day, a guy named Myron Golden, who’s this tremendous, tremendous businessman, he said there’s no such thing as a bad day. When people tell him they’re having a bad day, he says “To me, it means you’re counting your burdens, and not your blessings, and all people have both.”

So for these reasons, I truly believe Solution Focused Brief Therapy is absolutely the best approach.

Now, I can be a little scientific and let you know there is research supporting that. My good buddy Adam, who is here with me, and I’m gonna put him this video and have him explain it, because he explained it yesterday at this event that we’re teaching at, that there is research supporting these ideas. This isn’t just me making this up, but…

“Is Solution Focused Brief Therapy the best approach?” I’m now fully ready to say everybody that, “Yes, it is.”

For a long time, you don’t want to offend people. Is Solution Focused Brief Therapy better? No, it’s just different. But forget all that. It’s better. And for those reasons why. Now I want Adam to say the research he talked about yesterday, as to why it’s better.

Dr. Adama Froerer:

So Elliott just mentioned that there is some research that shows that Solution Focused Brief Therapy can be really useful with people.

And one of the things that I think is important, in an era of evidence based practice, is that Solution Focused Brief Therapy lives up to the expectation that there’s evidence for this approach. And now there have been tons of meta analyses that have been done.

In the last few weeks, I actually have just helped contribute to two meta analyses.

One that was predominantly conducted in the Netherlands. And, this was actually the biggest meta analysis that has been done to date. And we looked at all of the research from around the world. And one of the things that we really kind of emphasized over and over again, is that both with what they call internalized and externalized disorders, or things like that, Solution Focused Brief Therapy is as effective or even more effective than other evidence based approaches.

The second meta analysis that we really recently did is a meta analysis that was about all of the research that’s come out of Iran. And you might wonder, why did we do a meta analysis about the research from Iran? And the reality is, because this is the country in the world, maybe tied with China, where the most Solution Focused research is coming from. And we just said, in essence, what does all of that literature say coming from this place where the most Solution Focused research is coming from?

And one of the things that we discovered is that Solution Focused Brief Therapy again has proven to be effective with a population that we didn’t quite know if it was effective with or not, which broadens its good in Western cultures and Eastern cultures, which again supports the evidence that’s coming out of China as well. But one of the things that we discovered is that it’s actually more, they have a bigger effect size or more effectiveness than other meta analyses that we’ve discovered before.

So we need to start wondering and saying what is it about what’s happening in Iran that’s improving the effectiveness of this approach. So those two things are important. But I think really one of the things that’s important is, does it work with the individual people that you’re sitting with? And one of the things that I think is really, really valuable about that is that we can take all that empirical research and we can sit with confidence with our clients.

And one of the things that really makes a huge difference with our clients, is when we come in with confidence, when we bring our clinical expertise to this situation. But the biggest factor that shows that Solution Focused Brief Therapy is effective is actually in what they call the common factors literature. One of the things that they talk most about is the biggest change factor is hope.

And this is an approach that is built from the very beginning… “What are your best hopes?” It’s built on hope. And every utterance that’s spoken thereafter is in service of building hope. So if hope is the biggest change factor, we know that this is an approach that starts with that as the foundation.

And the final thing that I would say about the effectiveness of Solution Focused Brief Therapy is that across the board, whenever we do these meta analyses, we kind of look at how quickly does it happen, how quickly does change occur, how quickly do clients feel like they get better.

And the thing that I would say that we find over and over and over is that Solution Focused Brief Therapy, when compared to other evidence based approaches, it occurs at the same level of effectiveness, but usually quicker. And you just heard Elliott talk about the fastest, most efficient, effective way to get from one place to the other is usually the quickest way. And that is found over and over and over in this literature.

And so for all of those reasons, I would say Solution Focused Brief Therapy works, works well, and as you heard Elliott mention, probably better than other approaches.