Counselling & Psychotherapy

FAQ

What is Psychotherapy?

There are many different types of psychotherapy, however all these types of treatment involve talking and listening. They are all ways of helping people to overcome stress, emotional problems, relationship problems or troublesome habits. What they have in common is that they are all treatments based on talking to another person and sometimes doing things together. They are the "talking treatments". The person carrying out the treatment is usually called a therapist, the person being seen is usually referred to as the client. In psychotherapy, the talking and listening is not the same as talking to a friend. It involves professional evaluation of the client’s current status, their objectives and implementing change strategies. It is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. This usually includes increasing individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experiences and is relatively short-term.

What is Psychotherapist?

A Psychotherapist is a mental health professional who has had a specialist training in one of the Psychotherapies. The psychotherapies are often called 'talking treatments' because they are ways of talking that help people better understand themselves and their problems. This process can help to solve problems and relieve symptoms. There are many different types of Psychotherapy, and many ways of being trained. Psychiatrists, psychologists and people from other backgrounds can train to become a psychotherapist. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships such as in a family.

What is Counselling?

Counselling is a type of psychotherapy which helps people address and resolve their problems and work through their feelings. A Counsellor is someone who uses ‘counselling’ to solve people’s problems or plan for the future. The word counselling (or counseling) comes from the Middle English counseil, from Old French conseil, from Latin cōnsilium, to take counsel, consult. Counselling can be defined as a relatively short-term, interpersonal, theory-based process of helping people, who are fundamentally psychologically healthy, to resolve inter-personal, developmental and situational issues. Counsellors work with their clients in partnership and explore their difficulties such as; distress they may be experiencing, dissatisfaction with life or loss of a sense of direction and purpose.

By listening attentively and patiently the counsellor can begin to perceive the difficulties from the client's point of view and can help them to see things more clearly, possibly from a different perspective. Counselling is a way of enabling choice or change or of reducing confusion. It does not involve giving advice or directing a client to take a particular course of action. Counsellors do not judge or exploit their clients in any way.

In the counselling sessions the client can explore various aspects of their life and feelings, talking about them freely and openly in a way that is rarely possible with friends or family. Bottled up feelings such as anger, anxiety, grief and embarrassment can become very intense and counselling offers an opportunity to explore them, with the possibility of making them easier to understand. The counsellor will encourage the expression of feelings and as a result of their training will be able to accept and reflect the client's problems without becoming burdened by them.

Acceptance and respect for the client are essentials for a counsellor and, as the relationship develops, so too does trust between the counsellor and client, enabling the client to look at many aspects of their life, their relationships and themselves which they may not have considered or been able to face before. The counsellor may help the client to examine in detail the behaviour or situations which are proving troublesome and to find an area where it would be possible to initiate some change as a start. The counsellor may help the client to look at the options open to them and help them to decide the best for them. A counsellor may work with individual patients, or with couples or groups.

For further information you mind find it helpful to look at the following websites.
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
The Hong Kong Professional Counselling Association
The Australian Counselling Association
The Canadian Counselling Association

What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)?

CBT is also a form of psychotherapy. It is a talking treatment that emphasises the important role of thinking in how we feel and what we do. The treatment involves identifying how negative thoughts affect us and then looks at ways of tackling or challenging those thoughts. A Cognitive Therapist is someone who has been trained in the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. It is a way of helping people to cope with stress and emotional problems by talking about the connections between the way we think, how we feel and how we behave.

What is a Psychologist?

A Psychologist is a professional who is interested in how people think, how they act, react and interact. Psychologists are experts in psychology, the systematic investigation of the human mind, including behavior, cognition, and affect (feelings and emotions). Psychologists are usually categorized under a number of different fields, the most well-recognized being clinical and counseling psychologists, who provide mental health care and conduct substantive and applied research. Doctoral level trained psychologists are also the experts in the provision/administration and interpretation of psychological tests and assessment.

A Clinical Psychologist is a psychologist who has undergone specialist training in the treatment of people with mental health problems. In general, Clinical Psychologists would have received at least a Masters degree in clinical psychology. However nowadays, most clinical psychologists would have obtained a doctoral level of training with years of clinical practice under supervision.

What is a Psychiatrist?

A Psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specialises in mental health problems and is trained to deal with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders. You may come across the following grades:
A Consultant is a doctor who has reached a senior position in terms of qualifications, treating people, training other doctors and helping to organize and run services.
A Clinical assistant is an experienced and senior doctor working under the supervision of a consultant.

What is the difference between a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist?

Psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists are all professionally-trained people who help individuals that suffer from psychological problems. The main difference between them is that psychiatrists are medically qualified doctors who treat mental health problems with both psychological and pharmaceutical interventions. Psychologists are not medically-trained professionals, and they are primarily concerned with the study of how people think, act, react and interact. Psychologists have specialized in the field of ‘psychology’ and they may undergo specialized training in their chosen field, such as ‘educational psychology’ ‘forensic psychology’ or ‘counselling psychology’. They utilize non-pharmacological interventions such as psychotherapy, cognitive therapy, and hypnotherapy in dealing with mental health issues.