I’ve had a few people tell me therapy might be a good idea but Im seeing a psychologist atm and I haven’t the faintest idea what the difference is.
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Imagine a venn diagram with the following bubbles: psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, and others. They all intersect in various ways with each other.
Psychologists are people who studied psychology – this includes how people make memories, develop language skills, adapt to social situations, develop their personalities, and the influence of their biology in all of the above. They can specialise to become educational, health, cognitive, clinical, forensic psychologists, or counsellors.
Psychiatrists are people who have a medical background and then specialised in mental health, so they can diagnose people with mental health conditions and prescribe appropriate medication for it.
Therapists are people who may have studied psychology, or psychiatry, and also specialised in psychological therapies – this can be CBT, DBT, psychoanalysis, etc. Clinical psychologists and counsellors would be the most common.
Therapy may be a person to person talking therapy, or a computerised therapy (e.g. online CBT), or a mixture. While a clinical psychologist can conduct mental and cognitive tests and then may offer therapy, counsellors offer therapy to people who already have been assessed. Therapy may also run concurrently with medical treatment, e.g. taking mood stabilisers at the same time as having talking therapy about depression. Psychologists cannot prescribe medication, psychiatrists can.
There are also people who adopt established therapy techniques without necessarily having a background in psychology or psychiatry and offer services to people. They like to call themselves life coaches.
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