What is a Psychotherapist

A psychotherapist is a trained mental health professional who uses talk therapy to help people work with emotional difficulties, psychological challenges and mental health conditions.

That is the definition. The more useful answer is what separates psychotherapy from the other things it gets confused with. We are Richard and Helena Boyd, and we have practised as psychotherapists in Perth since 2005. This covers what psychotherapists actually do, how the training works in Australia, where the key differences with psychologists sit, and what happens in a session.

What Does A Psychotherapist Do?

The short version is that psychotherapists work with patterns rather than symptoms.

Counselling tends to focus on a present problem and practical strategies. Psychotherapy goes after what keeps producing the problem, which usually means unconscious patterns laid down long before the current situation. That includes examining past experiences, tracking recurring behaviour patterns, working with underlying interpersonal issues, and building the self awareness that lets someone interrupt a cycle rather than repeat it. Helping people improve self awareness is not an abstract goal. It is the mechanism by which anything else changes.

Day to day, psychotherapists conduct assessments, develop treatment plans with the person rather than for them, and provide therapy over a series of sessions, helping people strengthen coping mechanisms so the change holds after therapy ends.

Psychotherapist Vs Psychologist

This is the comparison people search for most, and the key differences are clear.

A registered psychologist holds registration with the Psychology Board of Australia under AHPRA. The title is protected by law, training takes a minimum of six years including an undergraduate degree and then a master’s degree, doctoral degree or supervised practice, and psychologists perform talk therapy alongside psychological assessment and formal diagnosis. Clinical psychologists complete further training in clinical psychology, and psychologists also work across areas such as health psychology, research and education. The Australian Psychological Society is the main professional body, and a doctorate degree is one of several pathways rather than a requirement.

Psychotherapist is not a protected title in Australia and there is no AHPRA registration for it. The field is self regulated through professional associations. That is the single most important thing to understand before you book anyone, and we have written about it in more depth in our article on the difference between psychotherapists and psychologists.

Training And Qualifications In Australia

Because the title is open, the burden of checking falls on you, and it is worth knowing what good looks like.

Reputable psychotherapists complete four to six years of extensive training in psychotherapy, often a master’s degree, plus specific training in one or more named modalities and a substantial number of supervised clinical hours before practising independently. They then work under ongoing supervision and complete continuing professional development every year to maintain membership.

The two bodies that matter here are the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia and the Australian Counselling Association. Both set training standards, ethical requirements and complaints processes. Ask any psychotherapist which professional body they belong to and check that membership directly. Anyone worth seeing will expect the question.

What Psychotherapists Treat

Psychotherapists work across most of what brings people to therapy, with some clear limits.

Psychotherapists treat mental health conditions and everyday mental health issues alike. Common presentations include anxiety, depression, trauma and post traumatic stress, grief, anger, relationship problems, substance abuse, eating disorders, low self esteem and the sense that something is wrong without a name attached to it. The aim is to help people manage symptoms and reduce anxiety in the short term while working on what generates it.

The limits matter. Psychotherapists do not diagnose mental health disorders. Where someone needs a formal diagnosis of a condition such as major depressive disorder, or an assessment for ADHD or autism, that sits with psychologists and psychiatrists, and a good psychotherapist refers rather than improvises. Severe mental illnesses and high risk presentations usually need other mental health professionals involved alongside.

Do Psychotherapists Prescribe Medication?

No. Psychotherapists do not prescribe medication, and neither do psychologists.

Only medical doctors can prescribe, which in mental health usually means a psychiatrist or your GP. If medication is part of your picture, therapy still matters, because the two do different jobs. In our experience the combination works better than either alone for moderate to severe anxiety and depression.

If you are already on medication, tell your psychotherapist. It changes nothing about whether we can work with you and everything about how we read what is happening.

Titles That Do Not Apply In Australia

A lot of what people read about psychotherapists online is American, and it does not transfer.

The American Psychiatric Association describes psychotherapy broadly as talk therapy, and that part holds anywhere. The credentialling does not. Terms like licensed marriage and family therapist, licensed professional counselor and state licensure boards belong to the United States system and have no Australian equivalent. Neither does the requirement for a doctoral degree that appears in a lot of American guidance.

If an article tells you to check someone’s state licence, it was not written for this country. Here the equivalent check is professional association membership.

Types Of Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is a family of approaches rather than one method, and most experienced practitioners work across several.

Cognitive behavioural therapy targets the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviour, and has the largest evidence base for anxiety and depression. Psychodynamic psychotherapy explores how early relationships shaped current patterns. Interpersonal therapy works on relationships and helps people improve communication as the route to change.

Acceptance and commitment therapy teaches people to hold difficult thoughts rather than fight them. Mindfulness based cognitive therapy combines cognitive work with meditative practice. Supportive psychotherapy, sometimes called supportive therapy, focuses on stabilising someone and strengthening community functioning rather than restructuring anything. Body psychotherapy works with what the nervous system is doing rather than only what a person’s thoughts are saying. Other therapies suit specific concerns, which is why most practitioners hold several.

What Happens In Therapy Sessions

Sessions are more ordinary than most people expect, which is usually a relief.

Ours run 55 minutes, weekly or fortnightly, and most people begin with five or six sessions before deciding how far they want to go. The first session covers what brought you in, your history and what you want to be different, and by the end you should have a rough plan rather than a diagnosis.

After that the work varies. Some sessions are practical and focused on this week, including what you change in your daily routine. Others go slower and stay with something older. What stays constant is that it is confidential, and that you set the pace.

How We Work

Our approach is Integrative Body Mind Psychotherapy, built on the principle that the body is the subconscious mind.

In practice we combine psychodynamic therapy, cognitive approaches, humanistic elements and body psychotherapy, with Richard’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy training and our Core Energetics background carrying the trauma work. What that means in the room is that we track what happens in your breathing, posture and gut while you talk, because that reaches patterns faster than discussion alone. Providing therapy this way suits people who have already talked something through many times without it shifting.

People usually come to us when they have reached the limit of what insight and willpower can do. Our psychotherapy work is built for exactly that point.

What This Looks Like In Practice

These are composite examples drawn from our clinical work, with identifying details changed.

A man in his fifties arrived saying he had already done therapy twice. He could narrate his childhood fluently and had every explanation in place. None of it had changed anything, which is the clearest indication for psychotherapy rather than more insight. The work started where his explanations stopped.

A couple wanted different things in the same room. She wanted practical strategies for the fortnight ahead. He wanted to understand why the same argument had followed him through three relationships. Both are legitimate, and naming the difference out loud is what let us do both.

A woman in her twenties asked in her first session whether she was bad enough to be there. She had no diagnosis and nothing dramatic to report. She stayed eight months, and it was some of the most productive work we did that year.

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions people ask us most often, and our honest answers.

Is A Psychotherapist The Same As A Psychologist?

No. Psychologists are registered with AHPRA, can diagnose and can attract Medicare rebates. Psychotherapists are not registered nationally, cannot diagnose and generally cannot offer rebates. Both provide therapy, and neither is better in the abstract.

Do You Need A Referral To See A Psychotherapist?

No. You can book directly, without a GP referral or a mental health plan. There is also generally no Medicare rebate, which is the trade off.

How Long Does Psychotherapy Take?

It depends on what you are working with. Something specific may resolve in a handful of sessions, while longstanding patterns take longer. We give people a realistic sense after the first two or three rather than committing them to a number upfront.

How Do You Check A Psychotherapist Is Qualified?

Ask which professional association they belong to, what they trained in and how long they have practised, then verify the membership with PACFA or the ACA directly. Not all psychotherapists have equivalent training, so the question is a fair one.

Does Psychotherapy Actually Work?

The evidence for talk therapy is strong across anxiety, depression and trauma, and research also shows psychotherapy produces measurable changes in the brain. What predicts outcome most reliably is not the method but whether you feel understood by the person opposite you.

Where To Go From Here

A psychotherapist is someone trained to work with the layer underneath the presenting problem, using the therapeutic techniques best suited to the person rather than a single protocol. In Australia the title is unregulated, which makes professional body membership and training the things to check rather than the word itself.

If you have been managing something for a long time with your own resources and have run out of road, that is the point psychotherapy is designed for, and it is where lasting change in your emotional well being usually starts. We see adults, couples and families at our Inglewood rooms and online across Perth.