Types of Therpies
What You Need to Know
Which therapy is right for you? What's the difference between counselling and talking therapies? What does CBT actually mean?
Which Therapy?
Counselling
Counselling, is a form of talking therapy that involves talking to a trained counsellor. There is not particular structure to these sessions and it is up to you and your counsellor as to how they proceed, usually it is informal and counsellors will listen to you talk, with occasional input. They will not tell you what to do but can suggest some coping strategies.
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Common problems for counsellors to deal with are homesickness, depression and stress.
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NB: the counselling service at RHUL is not set up to deal with more sserious mental health conditions. Some of the counsellors will specialise in some areas, but if you need more serious help such as CBT you will need to look to the NHS (or private). Additionally, the university counselling service is set up for short term help only, they recommend that you see them at most 2-3 times.
IAPT
Improving Access to Psychological Therapies is an NHS scheme to improve the waiting times for talking therapies. This service can provide you with more serious help, as they employ clinical psychologists (who are more specialist than counsellors. Clinical psychologists can provide structures therapies such as CBT or EMDR.
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This is a service to which you can refer yourself, or your GP can refer you. This will then result in an assessment by the service, with which you can figure out the best treatment approach. IAPT is aimed at people with more severe mental health conditions e.g. PTSD, General Anxiety Disorder, Major Depression etc.
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Have a look on the NHS website for more information:
CBT
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a form of combined therapy using techniques from cognitive psychology and behavioural methods. CBT is one of the most widely used and most useful therapies for most conditions e.g. OCD, depression, PTSD, phobias etc. It aims to get you out of a cycle of negative and intrusive thoughts, often the therapist will give homework.
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CBT relies of the patient to commit to their treatment and complete the tasks set by the therapist, it also requires that you want to get better. The therapist acts as a guide for your treatment as opposed to a miracle cure. Sometimes, CBT will not ease the condition, but can help to make it manageable day to day.
MCBT
MCBT is a variation on CBT which includes Mindfulness as an additional aspect to it. Mindfulness is similar to meditation, based on some Buddhist and Hindu teachings. The focus in this method is on de-centering and letting things pass by without worry. You can learn Mindfulness yourself or have led sessions. MCBT though is a more specialist development of Mindfulness and CBT, and was originally developed to help prevent relapse for patients with Major Depressive Disorder.