Introduction: Self-esteem is a psychological phenomenon that has strong influence on the emotional and cognitive aspects of human and is a strong predictor of life satisfaction. As a post-modern approach, short-term solution-focused therapy emphasizes on therapist and client work together to find solutions. This study aimed to determine the efficacy of solution-focused brief therapy on increasing self-esteem in female students.

Methods: The present study was an applied research and experimental method with a pre-posttest design with control group. The population included all the second-grade female students of Hashtgerd city high schools during the 2014-2015 Academic year. One school was randomly selected from female high schools in the city and after the initial screening, 24 students who scored below average on the basis of the research tool were selected and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The instrument was Cooper Smith self-esteem questionnaire (1967), which was completed by the participants in pretest and posttest. In this study, the experimental group was treated with group practices and weekly method for six weeks. Data was gathered using univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and analyzed in SPSS 18 statistical software.

Results: The findings showed that self-esteem scores in the experimental group had a significant increase compared with the control group. In other words, short-term, solution-focused therapy increased the self-esteem of the experimental group at posttest (F = 164.905 and P < 0.001).

Conclusions: Short-term, solution-focused therapy was effective on increasing the self-esteem of female high school students. It is recommended to school counselors to use this effective and efficient approach to better solve the psychological problems of students.