Mental health therapist

So what does a mental heath therapist do?

A mental health therapist is a person who consults people about, and helps them resolve any mental or emotional obstacles that may be hindering their well being. There is a wide variety of types of problems a mental health therapist may be able to help one resolve and the most common examples include:

stress

substance abuse

various types of addiction (not only to substance, but for instance gambling problems and such as well)

self-esteem and self-worth issues

grief, etc.

A mental health therapist's job doesn't only involve solving problems. In some countries , a regularly scheduled mental health checkup is the most common thing in the world even if the person is feeling perfectly fine. With that said, it is easy to see why many mental health therapists choose to work as consultants. The field of choice may vary from marriage (as an example of a field concerning one's private life) to career consultants (representing a field concerning one's professional life). Also, they will often work together with other health care specialists (psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers and school counselors) in order to provide a more complete treatment for "the patient" (who, taking the previously mentioned into account, isn't always "a patient" in the typical way we imagine the position when it comes to mental health).

A More Detailed Job Description

The methods a mental health care professional may chose to use in order to obtain necessary information to provide proper treatment may include: passive observations, interviews and tests. They also may apply the popular, "Freud's couch method" of helping the subject "relieve oneself" of a trauma in order to get to the trauma and resolve its source.

So, bluntly put, a mental health professional helps his patient make informed decisions of his own. A therapist also keeps tidy records of the patient which he may choose to share with other professionals in order to further help the treatment.

Becoming a Mental Health Therapist

A mental health therapist needs to be able to take into account many factors within and around the patients, among which are: external and social influences, the emotional as well as the physical state. With this said, it is obvious that the therapist must previously earn a degree in one of the following off the list:

Educational, school or career counseling Rehabilitation counseling Marriage and family counseling Substance abuse counseling

Typically, the master's degree is a two year program, alongside an obligatory internship, which one must complete simultaneously.

Which Mental Heath Therapist to go to?

The first thing to make sure of when one is looking for a mental health therapist is to know for certain that the symptoms are not caused by a physical state instead. With that out of the way, one is welcome to consult the relevant physician for further references, since the matter is probably so personal it's uncomfortable to be discussed in a non-confidential conversation.