What Is The Difference between a Counsellor and a Psychotherapist?

How do Psychotherapists differ from Counsellors?  

UKCP member psychotherapists typically undergo a five year, postgraduate, in-depth and experiential training in how to work with a variety of people with a wide range of emotional distress, mental health issues and difficulties. Psychotherapists are trained in one or more of the psychotherapy modalities in my case Relational Transactional Analysis.

What is a Counsellor?

Counselling is a way of enabling change, choice or of reducing confusion. Counselling can help clients examine in detail their behaviour or situations that are proving troublesome and to find areas where it might be possible to initiate change. A counsellor may help a client examine their options, helping them to decide which may be best for them.

What is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor?

Psychotherapeutic Counselling is distinguished from traditional counselling by its emphasis on the co-creation of an in-depth therapeutic relationship; wherein the suffering human being is viewed holistically, body, mind and soul and in the context of a concrete life situation and developmental stage.

Counselling or Psychotherapy?

Counselling & Psychotherapy are both forms of talking therapy and have many similarities.  There is usually a general understanding that a Post Graduate Qualified Psychotherapist has had longer in depth training than a counsellor, and can work with a wider range of clients/patients. Psychotherapy is often considered to take longer and go deeper

In addition often there are more than  twice as many training hours, tutor contact hours, supervised client work & personal hours of therapy required, usually over several years to qualify fully as Psychotherapist with the UKCP.

Note not all therapist using the title Psychotherapist meet the demanding criteria of either the UKCP or the BACP while at the same time fully qualified Psychotherapists with the training out lined above may be both members of the UKCP and BACP as well as other leading organisations.