Mental Health Care:

Notes about Mental Healthcare in Today's World…

Supply and Demand: Mental healthcare is in high demand these days. What this means is that the demand for mental health professionals is higher than the supply: many therapists and psychiatrists have long waitlists of prospective patients. When you have secured a therapist, psychiatrist or other mental health practitioner whom you like and feel you work well with, hold on to them in order to make sure that you have access to care when you need it.

Maintaining a Mental Health Care Relationship: Although there will be periods in your life in which you are thriving and may not feel a need to call on mental health services, there will be times when you will need them, and so it is best to maintain a relationship with your mental healthcare providers in the interim. 

→ You can do this by simply seeing your therapist once a month or a few times a year during periods when you do not need their services: this way you have a relationship with them when you do need more support. 

Types of Mental Health Professionals

Therapist: A therapist is a counselor with a masters degree in counseling with some concentration from child and family, to marriage, and so on. A therapist is trained in some method, or multiple methods, of psychotherapy. 

LCSW: an LCSW, or licensed clinical social worker is the only other mental health professional besides a psychologist and a psychiatrist who may diagnose patients. An LCSW typically concentrates on providing therapy within their area of expertise whether family, adolescent, marriage or other specialty.

→ These mental health professionals have a masters degree rather than a doctorate, as a psychologist and psychiatrist do, and so their services are less expensive although still covered by most insurance.

Psychologist: a psychologist is a mental health professional with a degree in psychology. A psychologist can provide psychotherapy, administer psychological tests, make diagnoses, however most psychologists cannot prescribe medication as they do not have a medical degree. A psychologist is more likely to provide talk-therapy than a psychiatrist who is more on the medical side of mental healthcare.

Psychiatrist: a psychiatrist is a mental health professional with a medical degree who is able to prescribe medications and make formal diagnoses. They may provide psychotherapy but typically make referrals to other mental health professionals for this.A psychiatrist brings a medical approach to the treatment of mental health.


Types of Therapy: 

Psychotherapy:

Also known as talk therapy, this is a kind of therapy which consists of a patient and mental health professional having a constructive and exploratory conversation into the patient's mental and emotional world. Psychotherapy is typically provided by a counselor, therapist, or LCSW, however it can also be conducted by a psychologist or psychiatrist. 

CBT/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:

This is a kind of therapy which has the specific objective of helping the patient change real-life behaviors which are preventing them from living well. This kind of therapy is about exploring behavior and thought patterns which cause difficulty and working to change habits and routines through objective based assignments. 

A CBT therapist is sort of like a coach, and can help patients dealing with depression, OCD, anxiety, eating disorder, and many other mental health issues where changing thought and behavior patterns is called for. 

→ CBT tends to be more practical than emotional. 

Jungian Therapy:

This is a variety of psychotherapy informed by Jungian Psychology. This therapy concentrates on exploring the unconscious, deep emotions, and personal history. It emphasizes relationships, and the connections between ourselves, our emotions, our experiences, and others. This kind of therapy is about exploring the inner depths of one's person, emotion, and consciousness. 

Somatic Therapy:

Somatic therapy is a kind of therapy which approaches emotion, trauma, and personal history through the body. The body holds emotions and memory just as the mind does, and learning to process this is one approach to therapy. This kind of therapy is grounded in eastern rather than western thought and has many connections to yoga and meditation practices which are ancient methods of processing emotions, ideas, and experience through the body. 

Pastoral Therapy:

This is a kind of talk therapy which involves a spiritual element, meaning that it incorporates a religious framework for processing and interpreting emotional and experience. You can find a pastoral therapist whose practice engages various religions depending on what your own identification is. A pastoral therapist is someone who has theological or religious training in addition to training in psychotherapy.

Group Therapy:

This is a kind of talk therapy in which a therapist, counselor or social worker serves as a mediator for a conversation between multiple patients who process emotions and experience together. Often group therapy is centered around a common topic such as grief, substance abuse, sexual assault and other emotional and mental challenges. 

Gestalt Therapy:

This is a humanistic kind of therapy which is based on the idea that a person is made of multiple elements which must be balanced together. This kind of therapy pays particular attention to context, meaning the world in which the patient lives and the relationship they have to it. This kind of therapy is about negotiating how to live in relationship to the elements in a person's life and to bear in mind a larger picture, goals, and outcomes. 

Integrative/Holistic Therapy:

This is a kind of therapy which involves the mind, the body, and the spirit, with an aim to bring these three components of being a person into harmony. Holistic therapy concentrates on building awareness of one’s self and the aspects of a person which need to work together, it is not about eliminating symptoms. Rather, this approach to therapy uses symptoms, such as OCD symptoms as information to point to an imbalance between the mind, body and spirit, which needs to be adjusted in order to change the behaviors which the person is exhibiting. 

Art Therapy:

This is a kind of therapy which uses art as a tool for expressing, examining and working through emotion. This can be a way to bring out feelings, ideas and histories from the unconscious or deep in a patient’s emotional history in order to talk about them. The work that the patient makes for art therapy purposes is used as a tool for therapeutic interpretation: this can be good for artist who are naturally expressive in making things, and good for those who do not consider themselves artists because they may discovered unexpected avenues of expression. 

Tips and strategies for finding a therapist:

Finding the right therapist can be a process, it is important to find someone who is competent and experienced, accessible and affordable, and also someone with whom you have a good personal report and feel comfortable. 

If you know that there are specific areas that you are looking to address in therapy, such as grief, social skills, mood swings, or obsessive compulsive behaviors, you can look for therapists who have a specialty in working with these challenges.

There also may be certain kinds of therapy which are suitable to address your challenges, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, or trauma therapy, in which case you will want to look for therapists who are accredited professionals in these techniques.

  1. Have an idea of why you are seeking therapy:

What has made you choose to look for a therapist? Have you been experiencing anxiety, depression, anger, have people in your life suggested you see a therapist, why? Have you recently experienced a transition or loss in your life?


2. The search for a therapist:

Looking for a therapist is like looking for a job, you have to consider what your resources are and do some research into different possibilities. 

→ See who is available within your insurance network

→ ask for suggestions from your current health care providers such as your primary care provider.

→ See who is available through your employer or school: many employers and most high schools, colleges and universities will have a relationship with mental health care providers who they can refer employees and students to. 

→ Make inquiries through your community, such as your church or social network, maybe a friend has a good therapist they can recommend, or a therapy practice they have used

3. Look for a good fit:

It’s important to have good chemistry and a natural rapport with your therapist – they’re a person to and good therapy often comes from good conversation


Introductory Phone Call: 

Once you have chosen a number of therapists to look into, set up an introductory phone call: Most therapist will grant you a 10-15 minute introductory phone call free of charge, this is an opportunity to get a sense of what it feels like to talk to them and whether you think there might be a fit.

This is when you can ask them about their approach to therapy, what they consider to be their areas of strength, and also if they might have any suggestions about what kind of therapy would be right for your needs, and where/how to find that if they do not provide that themselves.


Trial Session: 

Once you have had a phone call with a number of therapists, choose a couple to have a trial session with, this is a session in which you try working with the therapist in session (this is not free). 

If you feel like the session and report will work for you, then you can go ahead and start seeing the therapist, but if you find that you do not communicate well, or that you simply don’t mesh well, it’s perfectly alright, even in your best interest, to keep looking. 

Paying for Mental Healthcare:

Most insurance plans and providers should cover mental health services. However, some mental healthcare practitioners do not take insurance at their particular practice. What this means is that you would have to pay the bills yourself, send the receipt to your insurance company and be reimbursed afterward at a lower rate than you would if the mental health practitioner accepted insurance.