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APA Psychotherapy Training Videos are intended solely for educational purposes for mental health professionals. Viewers are expected to treat confidential material found herein according to strict professional guidelines. Unauthorized viewing is prohibited.

In Brief Therapy With Adolescents, John Littrell, EdD, demonstrates his approach to working with teenage clients. This approach seeks to shorten the length of therapy by looking at the client's patterns of behavior and helping to change the patterns that do not fit the client's goals.
In this session, Dr. Littrell works with a 17-year-old boy who is having problems with grades and getting into trouble in school. Dr. Littrell helps the client increase his sense of agency and see that he has more choices than he is currently aware of, which helps the client develop a concrete set of goals for change.

Brief counseling has nine defining characteristics (Littrell & Zinck, 2004). These are not mutually exclusive from characteristics of other counseling approaches, but taken together they give brief counseling its uniqueness.
The nine characteristics are:
- relationship-based
- humor-eliciting
- time-limited
- solution-focused
- action-based
- socially interactive
- detail-oriented
- developmentally attentive
- culturally responsive
Read more about the approach

is a professor and program head of counseling and career development at Colorado State University. He received his doctorate in counseling from Indiana University in 1975. Littrell was a Fulbright professor in Malaysia during the 1985–86 academic year.
Over the last 30+ years, Littrell has specialized in ways to speed up the process of change. He has published more than 40-refereed articles and book chapters, as well as producing five brief counseling videotapes. His two books are Brief Counseling in Action (1998) and Portrait and Model of a School Counselor (2005; co-authored by Jean S. Peterson). The latter is based on an ethnographic analysis of a school counselor who facilitated changing the culture of a school.
Dr. Littrell has been a featured presenter on the topic of brief counseling at 25 American Counseling Association professional development workshops. He is currently writing a counseling practicum and internship textbook to help students integrate theories, strategies, and skills.
In his spare time, Littrell writes short story mysteries based on famous counselors and therapists who solve murders that occur in their practice. Dr. Littrell's delightful sense of humor and tenacity in seeking clients' solutions make this DVD informative, practical, and memorable.

- Berg, I. K., & Steiner, T. (2003). Children's solution work. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- De Jong, P., & Berg, I. K. (2002). Interviewing for solutions (2nd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
- de Shazer, S. (1985). Keys to solution in brief therapy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- de Shazer, S. (1988). Clues: Investigating solutions in brief therapy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Fisch, R., & Schlanger, K. (1999). Brief therapy with intimidating cases: Changing the unchangeable. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Fisch, R., Weakland, J. H., & Segal, L. (1982). The tactics of change: Doing therapy briefly. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Furman, B., & Ahola, T. (1992). Solution talk: Hosting therapeutic conversations. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Littrell, J. M. (1998). Brief counseling in action. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Littrell, J. M. (1999). Employing clothing for therapeutic change in brief counseling. In M. L. Damhorst, K. A. Miller, & S. O. Michelman (Eds.), The meaning of dress (pp. 161–167). New York: Fairchild Books.
- Littrell, J. M., Malia, J. A., & Vanderwood, M. (1995). Single-session brief counseling in a high school. Journal of Counseling & Development, 73 (4), 451–458.
- Littrell, J. M., & Peterson, J. S. (2005). Portrait and model of a school counselor. Boston: Lahaska Press/Houghton Mifflin.
- Littrell, J. M., & Zinck, K. (2004). Brief counseling with children and adolescents: Interactive, culturally responsive, and action-based. In A. Vernon (Ed.), Counseling children and adolescents (3rd ed., pp. 137–162). Denver, CO: Love.
- Littrell, J. M., Zinck, K., Nesselhuf, D., & Yorke, C. (1997). Integrating brief counseling and adolescents' needs. Canadian Journal of Counselling, 31 (2), 99–110.
- O'Hanlon, W. H. (1999). Do one thing different. New York: William Morrow.
- Prochaska, J. O., Norcross, J. C., & DiClemente, C. C. (1994). Changing for good. New York: William Morrow.
- Selekman, M. D. (2005). Pathways to change: Brief therapy solutions with difficult adolescents (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
- Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Zinck, K., & Littrell, J. M. (2000). Action research shows group counseling effective with at-risk adolescent girls. Professional School Counseling, 4 (1), 50–59.
- Zinck, K., & Littrell, J. M. (2002). A peaceful solution. In L. B. Golden (Ed.), Case studies in child and adolescent counseling (3rd ed., pp. 108–117). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

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