Solution focused brief therapy (SFBT), often referred to as simply 'solution focused therapy' or 'brief

therapy', is a type of talking therapy that is based upon social constructionist philosophy. It focuses on
what clients want to achieve through therapy rather than on the problem(s) that made them to seek help.
The approach does not focus on the past, but instead, focuses on the present and future. The
therapist/counselor uses respectful curiosity to invite the client to envision their preferred future and
then therapist and client start attending to any moves towards it whether these are small increments or
large changes. To support this, questions are asked about the client’s story, strengths and resources, and
about exceptions to the problem.
Solution focused therapists believe that change is constant. By helping people identify the things that
they wish to have change in their life and also to attend to those things that are currently happening that
they wish to continue happening, SFBT therapists help their clients to construct a concrete vision of a
preferred future for themselves. The SFBT therapist then helps the client to identify times in their
current life that are closer to this future, and examines what is different on these occasions. By bringing
these small successes to their awareness, and helping them to repeat these successful things they do
when the problem is not there or less severe, the therapists helps the client move towards the preferred
future they have identified.
Solution focused work can be seen as a way of working that focuses exclusively or predominantly at
two things. 1) Supporting people to explore their preferred futures. 2) Exploring when, where, with
whom and how pieces of that preferred future are already happening. While this is often done using a
social constructionist perspective the approach is practical and can be achieved with no specific
theoretical framework beyond the intention to keep as close as possible to these two things.

A key task in SFBT is to help clients identify and attend to their skills, abilities, and external resources
(e.g. social networks). This process not only helps to construct a narrative of the client as a competent
individual, but also aims to help the client identify new ways of bringing these resources to bear upon
the problem. Resources can be identified by the client and the worker will achieve this by empowering
the client to identify their own resources through use of scaling questions, problem-free talk, or during
exception-seeking.
Resources can be Internal: the client's skills, strengths, qualities, beliefs that are useful to them and
their capacities.
Or, External: Supportive relationships such as, partners, family, friends, faith or religious groups and
also support groups.

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (de Shazer, 1985, 1988, 1991, 1994; de Shazer et al., in press), which
evolved from Brief Family Therapy (de Shazer, 1982) is a paradigm shift from the traditional
psychotherapy focus on problem formation and problem resolution which underlies almost all
psychotherapy approaches since Freud. Instead, SFBT focuses on client strengths and resiliencies
examining previous solutions and exceptions to the problem, and then, through a series of
interventions, encouraging clients to do more of those behaviors. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy can
be applied to a myriad of family-related problems. Although deceptively easy to learn, SFBT, like all
family therapies, takes great skill to practice proficiently.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is a future-focused, goal-directed approach to brief therapy that
utilizes questions designed to identify exceptions (times when the problem does not occur or could
occur less in the client's real life), solutions (a description of what life will be like when the problem is
gone or resolved), and scales which are used both to measure the client's current level of progress
towards a solution and reveal the behaviors needed to achieve or maintain further progress. Solution-
Focused Brief Therapy has often been identified with its innovative techniques, but doing so only tells
half the story. Underlying the search for solutions, de Shazer held an abiding belief in clients' abilities
to know what is best for them and to effectively plan how to get there. Many techniques can be
integrated into SFBT as long as they do not violate this fundamental principle.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is one of the most popular and widely used psychotherapy approaches
in the world. Because it is based on resiliency and clients' own previous solutions and exceptions to
their own problems, it is applicable to most difficulties faced by clients, and indeed has been applied to
almost all problems seen by clinicians. These include family therapy (e.g., Campbell, 1999; McCollum
& Trepper, 2001), couples therapy (e.g., Hoyt & Berg, 1998; Murray & Murray, 2004), treatment of
sexual abuse (Dolan, 1991), treatment of substance abuse (e.g., Berg and Miller, 1992; de Shazer &
Isebaert, 2003); sex therapy (Ford, in press), treatment of schizophrenia (Bakes et al., 1997), and self-
help books written from a solution-focused perspective (e.g., Dolan, 1998; O'Hanlon, 2000). The
solution-focused approach has been applied beyond traditional psychotherapy practice to include
interventions in social service agencies (Pichot & Dolan, 2003), educational settings and model schools
(Franklin & Streeter, 2004; Rhodes & Ajmal, 1995), and business systems (Berg & Cauffman, 2002).