NSU’s Brief Therapy Institute is providing free one-hour therapy consultations to the public every Friday from 3 to 9 p.m. until April 1.
Interns and faculty from the graduate Marriage and Family Therapy program will conduct the sessions, which are designed to help individuals and couples identify strengths, weaknesses and areas for growth in their healthy or unhealthy relationships.
The President’s Faculty Development and Research Grant made the free sessions possible with the aim of improving access to mental health care and counseling services by finding unique ways to encourage people to come in for a session who wouldn’t normally seek therapy.
John Miller, professor in the Department of Family Therapy of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, said the grant focuses on relationships as opposed to the most common mental health diagnoses of depression or anxiety.
“The bulk of people who come into any kind of therapy practice, regardless of why they came, which will generally be depression or anxiety, will talk about relationship problems that they’re having,” he said.
Although a single therapist conducts the session, a consultation is a team effort, making it unique among other types of mental healthcare. Various other mental health professionals and therapists will observe the case with the aim of giving the client as much useful feedback as possible.
Miller said that students shouldn’t feel like they have to have a problem to come in for a session.
“We want to try to bring people in who have a healthy relationship,” said Miller. “You would go to your primary health physician for a check-up even though you’re in good health. Our desire is for that to happen with mental health counseling.”
Melissa Schacter, a licensed mental health counselor and marriage, family therapist and doctoral student at NSU’s Marriage and Family Therapy Program, wrote the grant with Miller. According to Schacter, the one-hour consultations are a unique approach to therapy.
“This approach to therapy is preventative, rather than focusing on more severe interventions,” she said. “There’s not so much of an expectation for people to have to come back.”
Schacter said that it’s a good idea for undergraduate students seek therapy if they feel like something’s not right in their relationships or that something big is about to happen. She also said that therapy is a valuable experience overall, whether or not the client is having relationship problems.
“It’s an opportunity to learn about yourself and someone else,” she said. “Therapy is a chance to develop healthy relationship habits at a young age, and you can take that with you in life as you get into more serious relationships.”
Miller said 80 percent of clients who attend sessions at the Brief Therapy Institute are women; however, men are more likely to attend single consultations than sign up for multiple sessions.
Men tend to like the one-hour consultations because they’re solution-focused, Miller said.
“The first question we ask is: how will we know at the end of this meeting that this will be useful to you? What’s one thing you could get out of this meeting that would be a step in the right direction?” he said.
Miller noted that Americans treat mental health services differently than other health services, tending not to seek help because of stigmas associated with mental health problems. He said that this leads to issues when individuals seek therapy years after they’ve begun having problems in their relationships, but heading off situations early makes them easier to handle.
“Sometimes you get locked in a cycle with your partner, and you can’t get out of that cycle you’re in,” said Miller. “Some people can stay in that kind of cycle for years. But if you introduce an objective, trained professional who’s going to interrupt that cycle, something magical happens. It’s the power of an objective other. It’s amazingly useful to people.”
The sessions are open to all individuals and couples over the age of 18.
To make an appointment, call 954-262-3030, and ask for a single session therapy appointment.
Photo printed with the permission of John K. Miller
