Psychotherapy

What is psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy is a form of counselling or therapy that involves talking with a trained mental health professional, such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker or counsellor.

Psychotherapy can help you with a wide range of emotional and behavioural concerns including problems with family, friends or partners, and issues such as depression, anxiety or phobias.

Psychotherapy can be carried out one-on-one, in groups or with couples or families.

Different approaches

Psychotherapists can use a number of different approaches. They may use just one approach or they can combine techniques, depending on factors such as their training, the type of the problem, and your needs.

The following are the most common types of psychotherapeutic approaches.

Behaviour therapy

Behaviour therapy focuses on changing behaviour patterns by adopting techniques derived from learning principles, such as rewards for positive behaviour. This type of therapy can be used to change compulsive behaviours, to help with learning problems. In this type of therapy, it is assumed that some behaviours are learnt and what has been learnt can be changed.

Cognitive therapy

Cognitive therapy focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts (cognitions) that can lead to unproductive feelings and behaviours. Beliefs and thinking are explored to identify how they affect your behaviour.

If a thought or belief is too rigid and causes problems, the psychotherapist can help you to change them and relearn healthier thinking patterns.

Cognitive-behavioural therapy

Cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) can help you to recognise negative thought patterns and behaviours and replace them with positive ones. It combines techniques from behaviour therapy and cognitive therapy, and is one of the most common forms of counselling.

CBT is a short-term, focused approach often lasting around 12 weeks, and is often used for obsessive compulsive disorders, anxiety and depression.

For more information check out the Cognitive-behavioural therapy fact sheet.

Interpersonal psychotherapy

Interpersonal therapy (ITP) is a short-tem therapy. It involves discussing your relationships and the ways you can improve your social support. This can include improving your communication skills, learning how to express emotions better and being more confident with people at school and at work.

Psychoanalysis

This type of psychotherapy involves exploring the reasons behind why you behave in a certain way. Psychoanalysts look at unconscious motivations (reasons for behaviour that you aren’t normally aware of).

In this type of therapy you talk about your life and things that happened when you were young as a way of finding out how things you experience in your past can affect your current behaviour and feelings.  It can be a long process, often taking several years.

For more information check out the Psychoanalytic psychotherapy (psychoanalysis) fact sheet.

Narrative therapy

Narrative therapy uses special story-telling techniques to explore problems and issues. The therapist encourages you to tell and retell your life in the form of stories, helping you to see the same behaviour and issue in different ways.

By doing this, you can see patterns for types of behaviour and find more positive ways of coping and behaving. It is often used as part of family therapy.

Family therapy

Family therapy happens when a whole family decides to work through their relationships to improve family communication. The family looks at how to solve a problem or to adjust to a new situation.

The whole family goes along to the initial appointment with a counsellor or therapist.