A Psychiatrist is a medical doctor who has training in treating mental illness and psychological problems. Though some psychiatrists engage in talk therapy, most will conduct a 30-minute interview at the first meeting, and then 15 minutes monthly therafter.
Generally, they prescribe medications. You should be certain a psychiatrist is board certified. Board eligible, or board qualified, do not mean the same as board certified. If the medical profession has not said they believe the doctor knows what he is doing, then why should you?
(An exception is the psychiatrist who has recently completed training. But a psychiatrist who has been "board qualified" or "board eligible" for five years simply has something wrong with him, and is unable to obtain approval from the medical profession.)
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A Psychologist is a mental health professional, who began with a 4-year degree in psychology, on the bachelor's (B.A. or B.S.) level. Then s/he added another 3 or 4 years, possibly obtaining a master's degree in psychology first (M.A. or M.S.) He or she finished up with a Ph.D., or doctorate.
In some states, in order to be called a psychologist, one must also be licensed. The license involves serving a period of time under supervision, passing a written test, and in some states passing a board, or oral exam.
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A Social Worker is a person who has obtained a 4-year bachelor's degree in any area, be it history, art, mathmatics, music, or whatever. Then the person attended graduate school for 2 years and obtained an MSW (master of social work.)
Though some of this study was in mental health, much of it was in history, community organization, administration, and social welfare.
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A Licensed Professional Counselor is a person who may or may not have studied in a related area on the undergraduate level (first 4 years, bachelor's degree.)
In my own case, I began with a degree in sociology, and a minor in psychology. Later, I added the requirements for a bachelor's degree in psychology, though I had not done 30 hours at that university (UNT) so was not given a second degree. Instead, I went on to graduate school, to complete a master's degree. Since graduation, I have added another 100 graduate hours.
In graduate school, in most states, one has to do 45 semester hours of study in the mental health area for the LPC. (a semester hour means 1 hour per week for 15 weeks.)
The license requires a particular assortment of courses, such that if the person has not taken them by the time of graduation, s/he must take them before obtaining the LPC. (I had to take a course in ethics and a course in child development after graduation.)
The person then must practice under supervision for periods which vary from state to state. The persons who can be supervisors are limited to persons who are licensed themselves, in particular fields. Once supervision is completed, the person can take a test, and upon passing the test, obtains the license.
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The same holds true for the LMFT, or Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. However, Keep in mind that a person trained as an individual therapist can not just take the same knowledge and do family therapy. Family therapy is a specialized field, which requires different training than that of an individual therapist. One way to determine the person's training, is in knowing that they have a license.
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What is a Social Worker?
A social worker (MSW)is a generalist. S/he has obtained a 4 year degree in anything at all (art, history, music, etc.) and then has attended graduate school for two years.
The curriculum is oriented toward helping the poor, understanding the history of social work, connecting with agencies, and a smaller amount of training is related to mental health, than for other mental health professionals.
What is an M.Ed.?
Firstly, there are a lot of mental-health related degrees. They include an alphabet soup like, M.A., M.S., M.Ed., M.S.W., M.M.F.T., M.A.R.E., etc.
And there are a lot of completely different degrees called an M.Ed. Basically, that just means that it is a master's degree which was awarded by an education department of a college or university. Some M.Ed.'s relate to mental health, and some relate to education.
In my own case, I have never had a course in "education," or that is, teaching. All of my graduate courses have been clinical. My degree would have been called an M.S. if I had done a thesis, or an M.A. if I had taken a foreign language.
Generally, there is a history to a university's M.Ed in counseling. Ordinarily, it goes something like this: When the university was a small college, the education department had a monopoly on teaching counselors, school psychologists, etc. At first, they taught only school counselors, but as the college grew, they began teaching mental health counselors, drug counselors, offering the Ed.D., (Which would be a Ph.D. if the person did a dissertation and took a foreign language).
Eventually, the school got large enough that an Arts and Sciences department was created, and that department wanted to teach psychology. But the education department had been doing it, and they didn't want to give it up. This was all right with the new psychology department, because if they were going to produce Ph.D.'s in psychology, they wanted their professors to have degrees acceptable to the American Psychological Association as psychologists, wheras a lot of the education department's professors were Ed.D's, and many of them were trained in educational psychology. At one time, the state may have licensed Ed.D.'s as psychologists, but then changed that policy.
As the years passed, they have generally worked out cooperative agreements, in which the education department's students take a lot of their courses from the psychology department, giving them a wide variety of courses from which to select, and school of Arts & Sciences teaches courses entitled "psychology," leading to licensure as a psychologist.
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