What Therapist Should I see? – Transcription
Hi, everyone happy Tuesday! Today I’m going to talk about the difference between a therapist or counselor, a social worker, a marriage and family therapist, a psychologist and a psychiatrist. I know that is a lot of titles and it’s hard to distinguish who does what, especially if you don’t know the field, which most of you probably don’t because why would you. So I wanted to give some clarification because I do get asked that a lot of who does what? The first one is a counselor or therapist used pretty interchangeably. I am a licensed clinical professional counselor or anything in that equivalent manner. So a counselor or a therapist is somebody who pretty much strictly does talk therapy. So that is just where you sit down one-on-one with them or doing marriage counseling.
They can, they can work with couples. They can work with families as well. And also groups too, so they can do pretty much all of those in it is mainly talk therapy. So you’re coming in for an hour ish once a week or whatever that duration looks like, but they will do talk therapy with you to kind of help you figure out what’s going on in your life, that you might need help with some guidance, things like that. So they’re trained more in that talk therapy setting. The social worker is similar. A lot of social workers do private practice. They can do other things too, like working for the state agencies, things like that. So they’re trained similar to a counselor, but a little bit more heavy on like case management, social services, advocacy, things like that.
Then you have a psychologist. This is somebody typically with a PhD or a society, which means they have a doctorate degree. They are going to have more extensive research research and like clinical psychology skills. So they’re more clinical and just have obviously more education into that and to behaviors, things like that. They can also do testing a lot of the times. So they can also do talk therapy too.
We also have a marriage and family therapists. So they are also a master’s level therapist typically. And they do obviously talk therapy counseling. They are just more trained in that marriage and family. So couples, family counseling dynamics, systemic approaches, things like that. So they work, like I said, mainly with couples and families, but they can also work with individuals as well. Lastly, you have a psychiatrist, so this is somebody with a PhD.
They have a doctorate and they are able to prescribe medications. So typically you’re sent to a psychiatrist either by your therapist or your doctor, when it’s indicated that medication might be a good idea or at least an evaluation and an assessment to see if medication is something that you need, and then they will help manage that medication as well. I believe that some psychiatrists do talk therapy, but I think it’s pretty rare that they do. It’s mainly the medication management, evaluations, assessments, things like that. So hopefully this gives some clarification and I did the best that I can. I know I’m not in the other field. So it’s harder for me to tell ’em exactly what they do in terms of everything that they do. There’s a lot that goes into these degrees and there’s a lot of training and there’s a lot of differences, but there’s also a lot of similarities.
So if you need more information, feel free to look it up yourself too. But hopefully that gives you a gist of it. So you know what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for somebody to do talk therapy, you want to talk with someone, I would suggest going the route of a licensed professional counselor, a licensed clinical professional counselor, a licensed social worker, marriage and family therapist, or a psychologist. Obviously like aside, if you’re looking for more medication management or an assessment to see if you might need medication then I would go towards the psychiatrist, hopefully that helps. And I will see you all next week. Enjoy the sunny weather. If you’re in the Midwest, like I am, I know that it’s going to be warm. A warm is about 50 here. If you’re not from the Midwest, but we are excited. So get out, enjoy the sun. It’s really helpful for your mental health as well. So have a good rest of your week, everyone.