Narrative Therapy Essay

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Narrative Therapy was developed to help people separate themselves from their problems. The idea is that this will help the person use the skills that they already possess to minimize the problems that exist in their everyday lives. The Narrative Therapy approach was developed by Social Workers Michael White (Australia) and David Epston (New Zealand) during the 1970s-1980s. “White proclaimed is work to be exclusively that of ‘rich story development’ “(Gallant). Narrative therapy is a form of Gestalt therapy because it focuses on the clients’ personal responsibility. Narrative therapy helps the client’ navigate their own issue and come up with solution that they will be able to honor and stick with. They are both a form of psychotherapy and …show more content…

The provider is strictly there to ask questions in an almost investigative fashion to aid the client in their thoughts. The questions that are asked are important because they are supposed to help the client in identifying what steps that can take to remedy their problem. “White believed the dominant problem story, brought to therapy, blinded people to the preferred and alternative stories of their lives and relationships. It is through that particular way White asked questions and listened doubly that he was able to facilitate contexts in which the rich descriptions of alternative stories were made possible”(Gallant). Narrative therapy is evidence based because the provider is using an intervention that has been about for 15+ years. It has also been widely used and can be used with a number or populations. There is ample amount of research done on narrative therapy and it falls in line with being tailored to the clients’ needs along with clinical practice and …show more content…

I came across many articles where the narrative approach was used on children with many types of problems ranging from something like having problems sleeping at night to eating disorders. “A recent study suggests extreme worry in children in associated with negative beliefs about problem-solving, specifically poor problem-solving confidence and low perceived problem-solving control”(Gallant, 2013). Children who possess poor problem-solving skills will benefit greatly from Narrative therapy because they are given the opportunity to work through their problems and eventually will realize that they created their

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