What is a pyschotherapy?

Answer 1

Psychotherapy, or personal counseling with a psychotherapist, is an intentional interpersonal relationship used by trained psychotherapists to aid a client or patient in problems of living.

It aims to increase the individual's sense of their own well-being. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family).

Psychotherapy may also be performed by practitioners with a number of different qualifications, including psychiatry, clinical psychology, counseling psychology, mental health counseling, clinical social work, marriage and family therapy, rehabilitation counseling, music therapy, occupational therapy, psychiatric nursing, psychoanalysis and others.

Indeed, psychotherapy can increasingly be considered as a profession in its own right, and in Europe the European Association for Psychotherapy is promoting this view and has set professional training standards to this effect. However, some European countries have passed laws about psychotherapy that restrict its practice to the professions of psychology and psychiatry; Austria has a law that recognizes multi-disciplinary approaches; other European countries have not yet regulated psychotherapy. In the United Kingdom, psychotherapy is voluntarily regulated by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy