The difference between counselling and therapy

What's the difference between a counsellor and a therapist?

The terms ‘counsellor’ and ‘therapist’ are often used interchangeably by organisations, public bodies and people, and there's an ongoing debate within the field around how and whether these terms can be formally defined and differentiated. In addition, practitioners themselves may use both terms to describe their profession or may simply have a personal preference regarding which term they use to describe their practice. It’s important to note that neither of these approaches are incorrect.

Ultimately, both types of professionals are there to help people work through their mental health problems and aid mental health recovery. However, there are some individual features of counselling and therapy, that may be considered to be differences between the two.

What can therapy and counselling treat?

Therapy may be more likely than counselling to be used to treat diagnosed mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). This is because therapy is evidence-based and formulation-driven, and in many cases, has been specifically designed to treat certain mental illnesses.

On the other hand, counselling may be more commonly used to treat other presenting issues that aren’t necessarily diagnosed mental illnesses. These might include things like bereavement and grief counselling, relationship counselling, building coping strategies, and support with other issues such as low self-esteem. These issues may be considered to be related to the general ‘ups and downs’ of life, although this isn’t to say that they're any less significant than formal mental health conditions.

What will a therapy/counselling session focus on?

In counselling, you’re more likely to focus on the short-term ‘here and now’ and find ways to manage your current issues and feelings. Your counsellor will typically assess how you’re feeling in the present moment and how this is affecting your wellbeing on a day-to-day basis.

During therapy, as well as having an awareness of the ‘here and now’, you’re also more likely to explore the ‘back story’ to your problems, in order to get to the root cause of these. This will enable you to understand how your past experiences may have influenced the way you’re feeling, challenge the way you respond to these, and move forwards.

What training will a therapist or counsellor receive?

It could be said that most practitioners in the field start off with a broader counselling approach as their initial training. They may then add further, more focused training to their skillset, which may include psychotherapy training such as CBT, DBT, or the other approaches mentioned above. At this point, they may begin to identify themselves as more of a therapist or psychotherapist.

Therefore, a therapist may have undertaken more technique-specific training than a counsellor, but that’s not to say they have better experience than a counsellor – it’s simply more likely to be focused in a certain area or areas.