Psychotherapy

Psychotherapists are trained to help you express your thoughts and feelings and explore what comes up when you do. They listen and provide a non-judgmental space so you can feel heard and understood.

Psychotherapy is conducted with individuals, groups, couples and families. Psychotherapists help people to overcome stress, emotional and relationship problems or troublesome habits.

You don’t need to be in crisis or have a diagnosed mental illness to have psychotherapy. It can help you with emotional or mental health problems, including:

• anxiety
• feeling like you can’t cope
• problems dealing with stress or recovering from stressful situations
• lack of confidence or extreme shyness
• coping with the effects of abuse
• feelings of depression, sadness, grief or emptiness
• extreme mood swings
• difficulty making or sustaining relationships, or repeatedly becoming involved in unsatisfying or destructive relationships
• sexual problems
• difficulties coming to terms with losses such as bereavement, divorce or unemployment
• eating disorders
• self-harm
• obsessive behaviour
• panic attacks and phobias

There are many different approaches in psychotherapy, or talking therapies, which include:

• cognitive behavioural therapies
• psychoanalytic therapies
• psychodynamic therapies
• systemic and family psychotherapy
• arts and play therapies
• humanistic and integrative psychotherapies
• hypno-psychotherapy
• experiential constructivist therapies

Training to become a psychotherapist usually takes four years, combining study with clinical training under supervision and provided by a number of organisations, which are usually accredited by bodies such as

• The UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP)
• The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy 
• The British Psychoanalytic Council

A psychotherapist may be a psychiatrist, psychologist or other mental health professional, who has had further specialist training in psychotherapy. Increasingly, there are a number of psychotherapists who do not have backgrounds in the above fields, but who have undertaken in-depth training in this area.

Medical psychotherapists are fully-qualified doctors who have qualified in psychiatry and then undertaken a three or four-year specialist training in psychotherapy. Their role is in the psychotherapeutic treatment of patients with psychiatric illnesses.