All About Mental Health Therapy and How it Differs from Medical Treatments

What is Mental Health Therapy?

Mental health therapy is any kind of intervention that is designed to help a person cope with or overcome emotional distress and may involve either talking type therapies or the use of medications.

In general terms, the talking therapies such as CBT, psychodynamic therapy or counselling target people’s past experiences (the causes of their distress) whereas medications are targeted at the symptoms of the problems rather than the cause.

These different approaches can be understood by the way that mental distress is modelled.

Medical professional tend to use the biomedical models of mental illness whilst psychologists focus on what has happened during a person’s lifetime.

Although medications can undoubtedly provide relief for many people, your mental health problems can often be irradicated altogether using psychological approaches.

Which is the Best Mental Health Therapy?

Clinical evidence suggests that different people find different types of mental health therapy effective for different reasons.

Whilst the inventors of each new type of therapy often claim that their new system is “better” than the others, there is little evidence to support these claims.

In fact, the research points more towards the quality of the therapy relationship in determining good outcomes than the type of therapy used.

In our experience, we have found that people tend to fall into just two camps when it comes to finding the approach that works best for them:

1. Those who prefer to work on their problems from an emotional perspective (counselling, analytical therapies).
2. Those who prefer to work on their problems using a more structured and methodological approach (cognitive therapies).

You may end up trying several different approches with different therapists until you find the therapy that works best for you.

What Happens During Mental Health Therapy Sessions?

Mental health therapy sessions involve exploring your feelings, understandings and coping strategies that you use to manage your problems.

We will be non-judgemental about your problems or behaviours and treat you with positive regard as well as an equal throughout the process.

Because therapy involves discussing matters of a highly personal nature, you shouldn’t be surprised if you experience a wide range of emotions or a reluctance to talk openly.

Effective mental health therapy should help you to think about your problems from different perspectives and explore why you attribute certain meanings to certain experiences.

Overall, a course of therapy should help you to come to terms with whatever has happened to you in the past as well as develop new and more adaptive coping strategies going forward.

Arrange your FREE initial consultation here.

If you’d like to find out more about overcoming your mental health problems using one of the talking type mental health therapy approaches, then why not arrange a free initial consultation with us.

During this consultation we will discuss your particular issues and the different types of mental health counselling we offer (including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – CBT) without you having to commit to any counselling going forward.

The consultation lasts around 50 minutes and is a great opportunity to meet with either Paul or Joan and decide if you would like to proceed with any support.