Psychology Counseling

The Difference between Clinical and Counseling Psychology

Although very similar, clinical and counseling psychologists differ with respect to the disorders of the patients they treat.  More specifically, the two practices differ in regard to the severity of the disorders that they treat.  Typically, clinical psychologists treat more difficult and debilitating disorders, such as phobias, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.

Counseling psychologists work with patients suffering from everyday stresses, including career planning, academic performance, and marriage and family difficulties.  Counseling practices are designed to work helping clients work through variety of problems which are not usually severe disturbances. Career planning, stress, and anxiety are a few examples of problems for which an individual might seek out a counseling psychologist. Grief counseling is another area where psychologist counselors assist. The purpose in this sort of practice is to assist the patient in sorting through difficult life circumstances, rather than psychological or behavioral abnormalities that a clinical psychologist would consider appropriate for his practice.

Specialties in Counseling Psychology

There are areas of specialization within the psychological counseling profession.  Family therapy focuses on the interactions between family members. The psychologist undertakes this sort of treatment with the view that the family is a single unit; the goal is to change the functioning and relationships within that unit. 

Listening to one family member talk about his or her difficulties within the family is personal counseling.  Causing open discussion among family members about internal dissatisfactions and dysfunctions forces every member of the family to recognize each other’s concerns, whether or not they agree with the premise on which those concerns are built.

Another specific area of counseling psychology is couples and marriage therapy. This treatment focuses on strengthening communication between couples. Inevitably, the quality of that communication is an issue; the problem may be honesty, or domineering behavior, or refusal to communicate.  Couples are also the subjects of a large amount of research, specifically involving marital adjustment and satisfaction.

Group therapy is also a popular tool among counseling psychologists, because the group dynamic creates an entirely different communication mechanism than a one-to-one counseling session. Within groups individuals can learn new more effective ways of relating with others and gain support from other members.  Once there is comfort level among group members, often it easier for people to be candid in a group than in a single counseling session.

Less common specialties in psychological counseling include gerontological, multicultural, and genetic counseling. A gerontological counselor provides services to elderly persons and their families when they face changing lifestyles as they grow older.

A multicultural counselor helps employers adjust to an increasingly diverse workforce.