Planned short-term psychotherapy: Current status and future challenges

Abstract

The history and rationale of planned short-term psychotherapy is reviewed in the process of considering its optimal future development. To judge by the early literature on the topic, planned short-term psychotherapy (often as short as one session) began either as an interesting anomaly or as a second-best treatment whose justification was the chronic mismatch between the supply and demand of traditional time-unlimited therapy. In recent years, the growing appeal and remarkable effectiveness of brief psychotherapy have been repeatedly documented, and the field is now achieving all the hallmarks of a professional subspecialty in its own right. Future development of planned short-term psychotherapy will depend on recruiting young mental-health professionals who have been trained in short-term therapy techniques, in encouraging increased flexibility in planning the therapeutic enterprise, and in rewarding therapeutic effectiveness and efficiency.