How many definitelys out of 25?

If you design enough books on a school of therapy that seems to work, you’ll find that the incorporated ideas would be useful for anyone. You don’t need to be a ‘client’ (the current name for patient) of a therapist to learn from the ideas of solution-focused brief therapy or occupational therapy.

One of the great things about occupational therapy is that it doesn’t let the client’s past get in the way of providing useful help.

The problem is that it takes a long time for an initial assessment. In a book that I designed, a measure is proposed to aid the conversation between therapist and client. The Solution Focused Measure of Occupational Function. Instead of spending a few days finding out useful things, it takes a single session, going through these questions with the client:

How many questions would you answer with ‘definitely’? Possibly there are some tips here for New Year’s resolutions.

To read the introduction of the book as a PDF, visit its page at the publisher. If you want to learn more about brief therapy, check out the books (with more PDF samples) at BT Press or visit Brief’s website.

From a user interface point of view, the authors specifically designed the possible answers so that there was no middle option – only four answers: definitely, mostly, sometimes, not at all. They found that if clients didn’t want to take a position on a question, they would choose a neutral answer.