ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the potential flexibility, diversity, and disruptive qualities of Single-Session Therapy (SST). Single-Session Therapy—or more accurately, a single-session attitude to service delivery—can be highly generative. More detailed accounts of the Bouverie Centre's SST clinical family therapy program can be found in Young and Rycroft; including evaluations in Boyhan, O'Neill and Rottem, and client feedback in O'Neill. The Bouverie Centre has developed Single-Session Family Consultations as a key element in a comprehensive approach to engaging families in primarily individually-focused service systems, such as adult mental health services and alcohol and other drugs services. Although having a different historical development from that of SST by appointment services, walk-in single-session services share a radical approach to service delivery. One of the common misunderstandings of SST—that it offers less—is exactly why the approach is a good starting point to engage people who do not like therapy.
