When One Hour Is All You Have: Effective Therapy for Walk-In Clients

Responding to community demands for accessibility to mental health services, walk-in therapy enables clients to meet with a mental health professional at their moment of choosing. Differing approaches to meet this mandate, as described in When One Hour Is All You Have, share commonalities: There is no red tape, no triage, no intake process, no waiting list, and no wait. There is no formal assessment, no formal diagnostic process, just one hour of therapy focused on clients’ stated wants. The book’s authors and contributors also detail how walk-in therapy is highly rewarding to the professionals who deliver it.

In addition to describing a practical framework for this approach, the contents provide specific examples of walk-in clinics in Minneapolis, Calgary, San Antonio, Toronto and New Orleans (in response to Hurricane Katrina) as written by the personnel “on the ground.” The contributing authors are the editors, Monte Bobele and Arnold Slive, along with Kyle Green, Teresa Correia, Gary Richard Schoener, Ryan Clements, Nancy McElheran, Lee Hackney, Harry Park, Karen Young, Sandy Harper-Jaques, Maureen Leahey, and John K. Miller. The contents also include a foreword by Michael Hoyt.