Benefits of Psychotherapy

What are the Benefits of Therapy with a Psychologist?

Several types of mental health, medical and nursing professionals offer psychotherapy. Why might you want to receive therapy from a psychologist instead of someone else?

• Training -- Psychologists are the most thoroughly trained professionals who do psychotherapy. No other medical or mental health professionals receive as much supervised clinical training in psychotherapy as psychologists do.
  
• We understand the research -- The training psychologists receive enables us to develop a research-based, scientific perspective and to do our own in-depth clinical thinking about what psychological interventions will work or won't work for different clients and clinical problems.
  
• We do psychological assessment -- Psychologists learn to do clinical interviews and administer psychological assessment tools but, even more importantly, we understand the principles, research and theories behind those tools so we can properly interpret the results. This means that we can more accurately diagnose clinical problems and decide what treatments will help.
  
• We can work with complicated problems -- The broad-based training received by psychologists enables us to work with patients who have more complicated, multi-dimensional problems. For instance, treatment with a psychologist may be the best choice for a client who has a complex combination of disruptive behavior, clinical depression, an eating disorder, family problems and a serious medical condition.
  
• We collaborate with other professionals -- Psychologists regularly collaborate with primary care physicians and other health professionals regarding "shared" patients. Such collaboration may be particularly beneficial for patients with very multi-dimensional problems, as described above. Psychologists can also be helpful in identifying psychological aspects of anything from mild concussion to changing health-related behaviors. In a few states, the armed forces and the Indian Health Services, specially trained psychologists may prescribe medications to treat psychological issues. While Wisconsin psychologists do not prescribe, they regularly collaborate with primary care physicians and other health practitioners to identify and monitor the side effects and effectiveness of medications
  
• We take the time to do effective therapy -- Psychiatrists and other medical professionals typically have short appointments that focus on medication management for symptom control of mental/behavioral health issues. Psychotherapy is the primary intervention offered by psychologists, and we can give it (and you) the time required to be most effective. 

There are many reasons to seek out a psychologist when you or someone you care about needs psychotherapy, and we hope you will.