Introduction
Mental health professional can be defined as a health care professional who works for the sake of improving an individual’s mental health or rectify the mental illness. This broad spectrum of the mental health professionals encompasses psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychiatric nurses, mental health counselors, clinical social workers and many other mental health professionals. The exposure of these mental health experts is same illness, disorders, conditions and issues but definitely their scope of practice differs from each other. This difference of scope between the mental health professionals is due to the strict implementation of the laws pertaining to the required education and training in various categories of professionals.
History
Thus it must be kept in mind that since there are various professions that ensure the provision of services focusing on assisting a person overcome his/her state of mental illness, there are also numerous variations on these, which can lead to lots of confusion in the market of mental health professionals. The difference between the type of professionals is thus huge keeping in view what these mental health professionals focus or are specialized in and their professional as well educational background.
Features
One of the leading categories in the mental health professionals is the category of a psychiatrist, who is a medical doctor and the only professional in the field of mental health professionals who have specialized in mental health and thus can prescribe medicines. Most of the psychiatrists focusing on prescribing the appropriate medication that is going to work best for the individual concerned and deal their concerns. Psychologists is another name in the field of the mental health professionals who perform psychotherapy and possess a doctorate degree like Ph.D. Their training envisages clinical practices thus leading to professionals having thousands of hours of clinical experience before the start of professional practice. Special training in diagnosis, psychological assessment, a wide variety of psychotherapies, research and more is imparted to them.
Tips and comments
Clinical social workers are individuals who have completed the Master’s degree in social work. Most of the programs pertaining to these types of mental health professionals require them to go through thousands of hours of direct clinical experience and the program is focused on educating principles of psychotherapy and social work. Another name in the field of mental health professionals is the psychiatric nurses which are trained first as a regular registered nurse, eventually getting specialized training in psychiatry and psychotherapy, and holding on their account 500 hours of direct clinical experience. In most of the states in the U.S. the psychiatric nurses may also possess prescription privileges in line with the psychiatrist. Another kind of mental health professionals is the marriage and family therapist who tend to have a master’s degree but are also authorized to work with a bachelor’s degree in some U.S. states and have between hundreds of thousands of hours of direct clinical experience. Then, are the licensed professional counselors which most are the master’s level professionals who have been exposed to thousands of hours of direct clinical experience. The key to thus choosing which one of these professionals is right for an individual is upon the individual itself to determine and most of the times finding the right therapist or mental health professional demands more than one attempt.
