Like most people, you probably use the terms psychotherapy and psychology interchangeably. However, while psychotherapists and psychologists both work in mental health, their roles are not identical.
These professionals help people through their specialised knowledge and training, providing unique insights. Recognizing the distinctions between these practices is key to appreciating their immense value when used together.
Let’s uncover the powerful connection between psychotherapy and psychology:
How psychotherapy and psychology are different
Though it can be tricky to grasp because they are similar fields, there are some key differences between these two practices.
Psychotherapy, which is commonly referred to as talk therapy, is a practice that helps patients or clients combat mental health problems through talking. Typically, the patient or client will sit with a psychotherapist who helps them talk through their problems and memories to help uncover insights and heal from trauma.
Within the field of psychotherapy, there are many different specialties. These include specialties such as humanistic therapy, which focuses on a human-centered approach, and holistic therapy, which takes a more global approach to health and features practices such as acupuncture and yoga.
While similar, the role of psychologists differs in keyways. Often, psychologists play more of a medical role than their psychotherapist counterparts and take a more scientific approach to studying the human mind. For example, clinical psychologists often work with other medical professionals to treat patients’ mental health ailments.
Other psychology practices and specialties revolve more around the study of specific aspects of the mind. For example, developmental psychologists study the development of mental structures throughout people’s lives while social psychologists focus solely on the study of how social interactions and other people affect one’s behaviour.
Key distinctions between psychotherapy and psychology
Though psychotherapy and psychology overlap in their aim of discovering insights about the human mind to help people, they also have marked differences. These differences include:
- Psychologists often work in a more clinical setting
- Psychologists sometimes dedicate themselves to the study of the mind and how it functions
- Psychotherapists typically depend on verbal methods to help clients or patients overcome mental health ailments
- Psychotherapists can also branch out into more holistic techniques, such as acupuncture and reiki energy healing
Why combining psychotherapy and psychology can be powerful
As we’ve seen, psychotherapy and psychology can each play a vital role in helping people gain a deeper understanding of their minds, behaviors, and ways to heal from mental health ailments, albeit in different ways. While these fields can have positive impacts on their own, combining them has the potential to be even more powerful.
Some powerful benefits of combining psychotherapy and psychology include:
Better understanding of patients and the type of treatments they require
While psychotherapists are skilled at helping people verbalize their problems and heal, psychologists have a more scientific understanding of the mind. This being the case, psychologists can play a key role in helping psychotherapists uncover what is causing patients or clients to experience a certain mental health ailment.
Psychotherapists then have an opportunity to utilise their talk therapy expertise to help people heal more effectively from their mental health issues. Consequently, the combination of these professionals can help ensure that patients experience better mental health care outcomes.
Finding patients the right type of mental health care
One significant problem that mental health care in clinical settings is currently facing is a wide variety of approaches to mental health. Though this may not seem like a problem, it can actually make it difficult to provide patients with the right type of care. Given the many different types of mental health care professionals, patients are sometimes assigned to one that doesn’t take the right approach to their specific problem.
Fortunately, combining the approaches of psychotherapy and psychology can help break down barriers and ensure that patients are receiving the right type of mental health care for their unique issues. This comes from developing a broader approach to healing mental health ailments that involves a variety of specialties. As such, the combination of these potent fields can result in more patients receiving more individualized mental health care.
Advancing our understanding of the mind
While psychotherapists and psychologists both respectively have a specialized understanding of human minds and behavior, both have forms of knowledge that the other doesn’t. As a result of this, they each have room to improve in their understanding of the people they serve.
Fortunately, society’s understanding of the human mind can be advanced significantly by professionals in both psychotherapy and psychology coming together. This being the case, many are hopeful that professionals from these fields will prioritize collaboration in an effort to better our understanding of how the human mind functions.
Psychology and psychotherapy are complementary
While each practice has its own unique benefits, psychotherapy and psychology could both gain from incorporating the other’s approaches. Combining these disciplines may help professionals better identify and treat mental illnesses, and ensure patients receive personalised care. There is hope that these fields will make a concerted effort to integrate in the near future. This overlap could lead to incredible progress in understanding and supporting mental health.
Ellen Diamond , a psychology graduate from the University of Hertfordshire, has a keen interest in the fields of mental health, wellness, and lifestyle.
