While reading my last post you may have noticed that there are a lot of different kinds of therapists. I think it would be good to explain them to clarify what it is I do and what separates me from other mental health providers. To be clear, all the providers I will be talking about are mental health practitioners who do talk therapy. We are trained to talk with people to help them resolve inner conflicts and make visible change in their behavior.
First and foremost, what am I? Lots of people try to call me a Psychologist or a doctor. I am neither, though my background is in Psychology. I call myself a therapist, but I am technically a “Professional Therapist”. I am that because I am licensed in the state of Alaska as a “Licensed Professional Counselor” (LPC). That is the license that allows me to bill insurance and to verify that I have experience as a therapist. I had done over one thousand hours of therapy by the time I got that license. It’s one of the more common licenses that therapists like myself have.
What does that have to do with psychology or mental health? My degree is a master’s in Clinical Psychology (which I got right here in Alaska) which I need to have in order to be an LPC. All LPC’s must have at least a master’s degree in some kind of counseling or Psychology. For those who may not be familiar with college degrees, a master’s is higher than associate’s (2 years) and bachelor’s (4 years) degrees but lower than a doctorate. For example, I have an associate’s and a bachelor’s in Psychology, but I usually only mention my master’s because it is the highest out of them and the one my degree is based on.
So yes, my degree is psychology, my license is counseling, and I do services called psychotherapy. I agree it’s way too complicated but I didn’t get to decide the names.
There are other therapists who do very similar work to what I do, but with different degrees and licenses. A common one people hear about are social workers. Social workers have master’s degrees in social work and usually have a license with social worker in the name, such as licensed clinical social worker (LCSW). Social Work is similar to Psychology but where Psychology focuses on the individual person, Social Work focuses more on the relationship between the person and their contexts (friends, social systems, etc.). For one example, social workers are likely more experienced at connecting low income people with resources than I am. We can both be individual therapists though and I can help people connect with community resources as well. A professional counselor and a social worker can be equally as good at what they do despite having a different background. The military also tends to prefer to work with social workers, but that is for historical reasons, and not competency reasons, which are slowly changing.
There are also people called Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFT’s). They most likely have a master’s degree in psychology or social work, but they focus on doing therapy for families and couples. Their education is like mine, but their professional focus and post-college training is more specialized to families and couples.
That’s generally is for the master’s level people like me. Next I want to talk about the people who have a doctorate of some sort which means they have more (and maybe different) education than everyone you just read about. First there are the Psychologists. They have a doctorate in psychology (either a Ph.D or PsyD) and their licensed is called Licensed Psychologist. That does not mean they are a medical doctor. A Doctor of Psychology means that they have more advanced training in psychology, testing, and research than someone with a master’s degree. A common misconception is that makes them automatically better at counseling than someone like me, but that isn’t true. Knowing more facts about the brain and knowing how to help someone change their own behavior are two different, but related things. Someone with a master’s degree can be just as competent as someone with a Ph.D. at counseling/therapy. What a Psychologist can do is administer certain tests that I cannot (like an IQ test) and are more likely to supervise people from the top of an organization. They’re also much more proficient at research than someone with my background.
The last group I want to talk about is Psychiatrists and they are the most unique group I’ve covered. I like to think of a Psychiatrist as someone who couldn’t decide if they wanted to be a medical doctor or a psychologist, so they decided to be both. A psychiatrist is technically an MD (medical doctor) but they also have extensive mental health training and can provide therapy. They are also the only ones in this post who can prescribe medication for you. Psychiatrists also tend to be the rarest of these providers in some places, especially Alaska, so they are often too busy for consistent hour-long sessions. You would want to work with a Psychiatrist if you are more interested in medication management than recurrent therapy. However, it is perfectly normal to have both a psychiatrist to manage your medication while you work with a different provider for therapy.
As you can see, there’s quite a variety in the types of mental health providers. There are even providers with more specific utility that I didn’t explain, such as board certified behavior analysts. Your specific needs may determine the type of provider that would be the best fit for you, but some (like LPC’s or LCSW’s) can cover many bases. I hope you walk away from this with a better understanding of mental health providers, but it’s something any provider you may be interested in would be able and willing to explain if you need.
-Travis
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