What exactly is a psychologist again?

If you walk into a mental health clinic, hospital, or private practice there is a chance that you will meet many different types of professionals. Some common types that you will see in a mental health setting are (the official title of these professions may vary from state to state):  

• Psychologists
• Social Workers
• Mental Health Counselors
• Psychiatrists
• Nurse Practitioners
• Physician’s Assistants
• Nurses
• Medical Assistants
• Trainees , residents, interns, or post-docs

It can be confusing sometimes to distinguish between the people you meet and what they can do for you. I often meet people for the first time who ask some version of “what is a psychologist exactly?” In short, a psychologist in a clinical setting is a doctorally trained mental health professional who evaluates, performs testing, and treats psychological concerns. In all truth though, they can do many more things including:

 

• Individual, group, couples, and family therapy
• Helping students to overcome learning challenges in all levels of school
• Psychological testing to evaluate ADHD, intelligence, head injury, memory, dementia, personality disorders, and a variety of mental health concerns
• Psychological testing to determine if you are a good candidate for things like bariatric surgery and pain treatments
• Consulting with businesses to increase communication skills, reduce conflict, and improve work environments
• Working with athletes to aid in performance and to deal with injury
• Helping people to set goals and work with barriers to change
• Teach social skills
• Do outreach and educate the community on a variety of topics
• Evaluate treatments to determine if improvements are being made
• Evaluate programs and consult with other professionals to improve them
• Develop and utilize innovative and research based treatments and assessments

Those are just a few of the great things that psychologists can do. They go to school for a very long time and receive a lot of hands on training so that they can be exceptional mental health providers. To be a licensed psychologist, an individual needs to obtain a doctoral degree (PhD, PsyD, EdD) and at least two years of supervised experience working with patients. They receive more training in psychology and mental health than any other mental health professional. This can sometimes mean 6 to 7 years beyond an undergraduate (BA or BS) degree!

Hopefully, that gives you more of any idea of what a psychologist is. Each psychologist may differ in the things that they specialize in or typically do in their setting. In future blogs we may have some guest contributors who will share what they do as a psychologist or what they are learning as a psychology student.