A career in a mental health field can be rewarding, meaningful and enjoyable, especially if you have a knack for working with people and are a good listener. Yet if you want to provide mental health services, it can be difficult to know which field to choose, as most mental health fields share many similar characteristics. There are several similarities, and a number of important differences, between counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrist.
Counsellor
Counsellors generally work with clients to help them learn better ways to cope with stressful life situations mainly by providing talk therapy. Generally speaking, counsellors offer assistance to people suffering from problems that cause emotional distress, such as anxiety, relationship issues, eating disorders, sexual disorders, life changes and substance abuse.
They lack the in-depth understanding provided by clinical research found in therapy and Psychology. Counsellors do not require the same degree of advanced training or license to operate. A mental health counsellor is qualified to evaluate and treat mental problems by providing counselling or psychotherapy.
Counsellors provide psychotherapy. Treatment approaches vary and most counsellors should provide empirically-supported therapeutic approaches (meaning research has shown this approach to be effective).
Psychologist
Psychologists have a doctoral degree (PhD, PsyD, or EdD) in psychology, which is the study of the mind and behaviours. Graduate school provides a psychologist with education in evaluating and treating mental and emotional disorders. Psychologists cannot write prescriptions or perform medical procedures. Often a psychologist will work in association with a psychiatrist or other medical doctor who provides the medical treatment for mental illness while the psychologist provides the psychotherapy.
Many doctoral-level psychologists conduct scientific research. e.g. of the effectiveness of various mental health treatments. They also provide additional psychological services, such as administering psychological or diagnostic tests and consulting with involved medical professionals regarding the appropriate treatment for their patients, such as medication.
They can be involved in direct therapy with patients in private practice. A psychologist might be a leader or part of a team conducting research for a university or private enterprise. Psychologists use a researched-based psychological behavioural approach to treating clients. Can assess and make clinical evaluations of clients mental health and diagnose mental illness.
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a mental health professional who has been trained first as a medical practitioner but has then gone on to receive specialized training in treating mental disorders, including the more serious ones such as schizophrenia and severe depression.
Psychiatrists being physicians can arrange hospital admissions ( e.g. to a psychiatric ward) and carry out physical examinations and various other types of investigative procedures such as electroencephalographs (EEGs) and brain imaging procedure scans(e.g. computer-assisted tomography (CAT)). Because of their long training and medical status, the fees of psychiatrists are generally higher than the other mental health professions.
Most psychiatrists will choose to treat mental health diagnoses with psychotropic medications. A typical intake session can be around an hour to 90 minutes. Follow-up appointments tend to be much shorter in length. Psychiatrists work in private practice, hospitals, medical centres, in-patient treatment facilities and other settings. Many psychiatrists also conduct scientific research.
The Psych Geek 