Ever wondered what the different types of therapists are and how they differ? Like what’s the difference between a social worker and a psychologist, or a CPC and an MFT?

Psychologists

Let’s start with a psychologist. In most states a psychologist needs a PhD or a PsyD to practice. There is an emphasis on assessment, so a lot of what they do may be psychological testing or assessing the client. There are times where they may do therapy as well.

Clinical professional counselor

A clinical professional counselor or CPC requires a master’s degree. CPC’s have the training to be a therapist, but they don’t do psychological testing. They have a similar perspective as the psychologist when it comes to working with the individual, meaning the source of this person’s issues is within them.

Marriage family therapist

An MFT marriage family therapist or couple’s therapist see the issues as non-internal. Meaning there is something going on in their immediate dynamic. For example, an 8-year-old suddenly has behavioral issues, they come in with mom and dad to see an MFT. They see mom and dad start fighting and as soon as that happens the child misbehaves. The parents stop fighting and turn their attention to the child and they get mad at the child. Inadvertently the child takes on this role as a scape goat, which serves the function of getting mom and dad to stop fighting with each other. These are the type of dynamics that can present in families that can contribute to problems.

If you have an individual problem and you visit a MFT you might get individual therapy, but you also may get something else. For example, a family comes in with a child with ADHD the MFT will offer the child therapy. They also may look at how it affects the family? What views are being portrayed on the child? What roles are being placed on them, and how can we shift that to be something different? How can we shift the dynamic around the child? How can we make this environment be successful for the child?

The idea is to see if there are distractions around the child in their current environment every day, and how to change those to produce the least amount of distraction so the child can be successful. For example, limiting the number of distractions a child encounters in the morning like television can assist that child with getting ready on time and making it out to the bus.

Social worker

A social worker would step even further back and not just look at the systems or dynamics within the family but also the systems in society. Things are set up so that certain people are treated differently, certain people have disadvantages. The social worker looks at what resources they can get to assist the individual, or the community. Social workers can do therapy, they can approach it from a social lens, or an individual lens.

These are something to consider if you are interested in finding a therapist.