A Crash Course Into Each Therapy Title

 

Transcript:

 

Riti: So, for the listeners, a crash course listeners or viewers- if you can give like a crash course into each therapy term therapy title. How it differs? And like what you would get from going to each one.

Rupa: Okay, like is so we’ll start from…Therapist is like an umbrella term. It’s an umbrella term we use for people. Therapist, shrink. Shrink in an American thing or therapist. All the people who you kind of do, a therapist is somebody who you can go to seek – to help you cope with either problems or life adversity. Umbrella term. So, we’ll go from the medical model to the non-medical model.

When I say medical model, a psychiatrist is somebody who trains as a doctor. They have to complete a certain number of general hours, and then they specialize into psychiatry, so they do the study of medicine and the study of mental health disorders – somebody who will be able to administer medications regarding psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders etc.

They are people who are able to give you medication, depression. Who are able to prescribe medications for mental health disorders – Psychiatrist. It comes from the medical model. They are the highest level of education. It takes a very long time to take study and become a psychiatrist and a psychiatrist is a type of doctor, like a neurologist, a psychiatrist.

Then we will have psychologists, who also particularly in Australia, they have to do extra intensive study. Four years Bachelors, they have a set thing which they have to do. They have to study for a certain number of years undergraduate, and they have to do postgraduate and then they may do a doctorate degree.

A psychologist studies human behaviour. Psychologists can be an organizational psychologist, clinical psychologist, counselling psychologist – somebody who is in the study of behaviours, so they have the knowledge and are trained extensively to do assessments and diagnose mental health conditions. And some of them are practicing as counselling psychologists. Some of them give talk therapy as well. So if you go to them (psychologists) and if you have a child or anybody and you have to do a diagnosis of something like autism spectrum disorder, ADHD and those kind of disorders, you would go to a psychologist; again they could be doctors who have completed being Ph.D.’s, not the medical model doctors who have got an internship in saving a life. But they are doctors, right? They can have Ph.D.’s, too.

Riti: What’s the difference?

Rupa: A psychiatrist is a medical model, a medicine professional. So, when you are going to study to be a doctor ie. a cardiologist, you are a doctor who has actually done a Master of Science and Master of Medicine. There’s a degree like that.

This (a psychologist) is a doctor where you do a Ph.D. – a research-based degree, and you can be a psychologist based on that. Some psychologists may not have done their PhD’s, but they still have to do that four plus six plus (years of study), then one year of psychological psychology. For one year, they can be a provisional psychologist and then they become a full-blown psychologist.

And they could be specializing in anything i.e.. organizational psychologist…

Riti: And even in the psychology umbrella there’s like clinical psychologist, provisional psychologist.

Rupa: So provisional psychologists are somebody who is trying to get into a thing (specialised field), who is kind of doing an internship to become a full psychologist. They have to practice for a certain number of years. But yes, in psychologists, you can have organizational psychologists.

They study organizational – how people in organizations work, what happens. They could be people who study the markets, the behaviour of people in an organization. They could be clinical psychologists; they could be counselling psychologists. So, when you go to a psychologist, they are somebody who can administer and diagnose certain mental health conditions. They can’t prescribe medicines. Any psychologist.

They can’t prescribe medicines, but they can diagnose. They are trained to administer those assessments, read those assessments. They are also doing a lot of research on how human behaviour works. Then comes this term psychotherapist or a counsellor. People get confused between a psychotherapist and a psychologist. Now, the main difference comes from the number of years you have to train.

Riti: Isn’t that what everything comes down to?

Rupa: It does, but also what you can do. A psychotherapist or a counsellor is not able to diagnose or administer any type of assessments. You cannot be diagnosed by somebody, like if you come to me, and I’m an art therapist and I’ll tell you who an art therapist is. If you go to a psychotherapist or a counsellor, they cannot diagnose you with an illness, but they will be able to give you strategies to cope with those conditions. Some of those conditions may need prescription of medication, which means they will ask you to go to a psychiatrist.

For example, if you’ve gone to somebody and they are going, “oh oh, this sounds like this is a proper mental health disorder, like depression, like anxiety.” You’re going to a counsellor and you have obsessive compulsive disorder, or you have a depression, or you have an anxiety disorder of any kind, or the counsellor or the psychotherapist suspects you may be on the spectrum for autism, or you might have ADHD and has there has been no diagnosis at all, then they might refer you to a psychologist, because they are the ones who can administer those tests and actually give you the assessment results of: Yes, is there a diagnosis? or is there not a diagnosis?

Then the psychologist might say, “oh, if there is a diagnosis” based on the severity of it, they might say, “oh, you might need medications to manage your situation”, which means a psychologist cannot prescribe those medications, then you go to a psychiatrist. Am I making sense?

Riti: Kind of. It’s very like a lengthy, wordy process.

Rupa: It is a lengthy, wordy process. So, if you have a mental health disorder and you need medication, you would be going to a psychiatrist. You will normally be referred to a psychiatrist. If you need a diagnosis assessment, you need some counselling done, psychologists also can kind of do counselling. So, if you need that done and need to learn some strategies on what happens, human behaviour, you go to a psychologist.

You can go to a counsellor where you are going through a life adversity, you’re going through grief and you need to talk to somebody, you need to learn some strategies and you go to a counsellor. Counsellor, psychotherapist are interchangeable words.

An art psychotherapist is somebody like me, who uses art therapy as a medium to talk to people about their feelings, thoughts, and also helps you learn strategies to cope with them.

Riti: Using as a medium.

Rupa: Using art as a medium. So, the art we create is not about the product of the art…

Riti: It’s about the process.

Rupa: It is about the process.