Hi, I'm Brooke Becker, a licensed marriage and family therapist associate serving clients in Austin and online across Texas. I work with adults exploring relationships, sexuality, and identity through a holistic, affirming lens that considers both personal experience and systems of power.
I recently had someone ask me the difference between a psychotherapist vs. therapist. The “psych” of psychotherapy had them puzzled. Did that mean I prescribed psychiatric medication? Here is a quick breakdown.
‘Therapy’ is a general umbrella term that could refer to any type of treatment intended to treat or heal a condition. The condition could be mental or physical, and describe approaches to healing across different industries. For example, when you go to a spa for a massage, the practitioner providing the service is called a massage therapist. When you break a bone or rupture a tendon, you need physical therapy.
Mental health professionals who are licensed to provide specific types of therapy use a modifier before the term ‘therapy’ to indicate a niche, or specialty in which they have additional training. I, for instance, often refer to myself as a sex therapist . Other examples of specialties include trauma therapist, grief therapist, or art therapist.
Graduate programs in counseling educate students with general knowledge of the many therapeutic approaches and areas of specialization, preparing them to graduate as a general clinician or practitioner. To ethically call oneself a certain type of therapist means this person has studied research, received formal training outside of graduate school, pursued mentorship, and likely a certification.
The word psychotherapy refers to therapy for mental health needs. People often use this interchangeably with the phrase ‘talk therapy’, or ‘counseling’. A psychotherapist will often shorten their job title to ‘therapist’, or the name of the service they provide to ‘therapy’, instead of ‘psychotherapy’ simply because it’s easier to say! A psychotherapist is not the same thing as a psychiatrist, as we did not attend medical school and are not licensed to provide medication for mental disorders.
To put it simply: all psychotherapists are therapists, but not all therapists are psychotherapists. While often used interchangeably, the term ‘therapist’ does not always relate to mental health work, whereas ‘psychotherapist’ does. I hope this resolves any confusion revolving around the difference between therapy and psychotherapy!
