For various reasons, the last few years have been immensely challenging for our collective mental health. Many people have experienced illness or loss due to COVID-19, with countless more going through financial hardship due to lockdown disruption and now the worsening cost-of-living crisis. As a result, it’s no surprise that mental health referrals reached record levels last year – with 1.4 million still awaiting treatment.
There’s arguably never been a more important time to talk about our problems. Counsellors play a vital role in allowing people to work through issues such as anxiety and depression and what might be causing them. There are many types of therapy available, with different options suiting different people – creating opportunities for counsellors to expand their services.
Broadening your operations creates risk, of course, making precautions such as taking out counsellors’ insurance necessary for sustainable success. But the potential rewards are high too, as you’ll be able to serve more patients and provide better experiences.
Below, get ideas for four specific types of talking therapy that you might want to offer to your patients.
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Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
CBT aims to help patients break down and reconstruct how they think about themselves and their circumstances, creating positive attitudes from less helpful behaviours. It can be useful for patients suffering from a variety of mental health problems including depression, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and bulimia.
You might deliver anywhere from five to 20 sessions of CBT, each one lasting around 30 to 60 minutes.
Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is a specialist talking therapy designed for people with PTSD. These patients may struggle with thoughts, nightmares or flashbacks of traumatic events in their past, such as serious accidents or assault.
This therapy aims to reprocess these memories to reduce their negative impact. A full course of around eight to 12 sessions can be challenging, so you’ll need to be patient and empathetic.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy
This talking therapy focuses on childhood experiences and subconscious thoughts which could be causing or contributing to mindsets or behaviours in the present. Identifying these links can provide greater self-awareness and understanding, allowing people to move forward with their lives.
Typical courses of psychodynamic psychotherapy run for around 16 sessions.
Couple therapy
As the name suggests, couple therapy serves to work through issues linked to problems between partners. This type of therapy can last for as long as 20 sessions, and requires equal buy-in from both partners to achieve positive, constructive results.
Couple therapy can be a useful way to break down grudges and communication issues while highlighting positive elements of relationships.
Could you add any of these talking therapies to your repertoire of services?
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