Why Clinical Psychology?
Clinical psychologists are highly trained mental health professionals with a diverse and extensive training in understanding complex human behaviour.
Clinical psychologists are required to have an undergraduate degree in Psychology, significant clinical experience in a range of clinical, research or academic settings before they complete their doctoral level training in Clinical Psychology.
During the Clinical psychology training a high level of skill is achieved in understanding complex human behaviour across the life span, from a range of psychological perspectives, and in interaction with complex systems such as family, culture, society etc. Clinical Psychologists also achieve rigorous research and academic qualifications that can be more pertinent to academic or service development type careers.
Clinical Psychologists are trained to understand human distress both from a single model perspective i.e. CBT,CAT, schema therapy etc and from a more holistic perspective. Your Clinical Psychologist should be able to find the perfect match for your needs (i.e. the use of a single therapy model or of a more comprehensive and bespoke approach).
For more information about the training and professional competencies of Clinical Psychologist please visit the following links:
https://acpuk.org.uk
https://www.hcpc-uk.org/
https://www.bps.org.uk/
What is the difference between Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry?
Quite often people are uncertain how these two type of professionals are different. Especially in the field of working with adult mental health problems or psychological difficulties, there is significant overlap with people using either service (i.e Clinical Psychology or Psychiatry).It’s difficult to give a comprehensive answer to this question but a basic difference in that psychiatrists have a core medical training and often understand psychological distress from a biological perspective and follow biological treatments. Clinical Psychologists have a core Psychology training and they understand human distress as the result of complex interaction between the person’s natural temperament and their life circumstances (i.e. attachment to their parents/carers, relationships with siblings, adverse experiences, traumas etc).
Psychiatrists can offer psychological therapy if they have the relevant training and can prescribe medication. Clinical psychologists work mostly through formulation and psychological therapy and cannot prescribe medication at present.
What is Formulation?
Formulation is a systematic way of making sense of the difficulties you may be experiencing, based on the information you provide to your Psychologist during the Psychological assessment. It is almost like a puzzle being put together by you and your Psychologist; it is made out of the information you have provided and the use of a range of psychological models that your Psychologist has been trained to use.
A formulation will tell us when and how difficulties started for you, why these difficulties don’t resolve despite your best efforts and it will result either in an action plan, that you can implement with some support from your Psychologist or in more systematic intensive therapy (with weekly sessions).
Useful links:
https://acpuk.org.uk
https://www.hcpc-uk.org/
https://www.bps.org.uk/
Schema- focused therapy
