ccessible by government funding through the Veterans Administration. Oneof the ironies of war is that it often creates large market niches and economic boon at the expenseof humanity.In 1963, due to an increasing need for services, President Kennedy and the Congress passedthe Community Mental Health Centers Act. This Act required an emergency service in everycommunity mental-health center and increased the demand for brief therapy services (Small, 1979).The community mental health concept was intended to eliminate waiting lists from clinics (which,not infrequently, were up to two years long!) and to get services out to the truly needy. (Saposnek,1984). To date, with our current emphasis on managed health care and an ever increasing need formental health services, the demand for efficient, effective and accessible intervention has increasedeven more, making brief therapy all that much more popular and necessary in the 80's and 90's(Nugent, 1994). Short-term or brief therapy refers to more than just the length of time or duration ofcounselor-client contact. It also incorporates the use of sophisticated directive skills on the part ofthe counselor. According to Richard Wells, author of Planned Short Term Treatment, Thetherapists activities throughout the helping process are directed toward (1) making problems andgoal definitions as clear as possible, (2) supporting the client in systematic, step-by-step problemsolving, and (3) using the pressures of an explicit time limit as a key factor towards change(Wells,1982, p. 9). Garfield (1989) states that, The specificity of the goals of brief therapy, the active roleof the therapist, and the expectations concerning the length of therapy all help to facilitate the processof therapy and to avoid some of the pitfalls that occur in long-term psychotherapy (p. 12). Fromthese statements we can conclude that the concept of brief therapy incorporates a strategic,systematic frame work for intervention a...
