What is Clinical Psychology?
Clinical psychology is a protected professional title under the HCPC (Health Care Professional Council). It’s illegal to practice under this title unless you are registered with the HCPC. This means that they have completed all the relevant training and are registered to practice in a safe, ethical and legal way. In addition, they are committed to continuing professional development and ensuring that they are aware of current best practices. You can always check the HCPC register to make sure someone is a professional (http://www.hpc-uk.org/check/).
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Other individuals may offer talking therapy and it is always important to make sure that they are registered with a professional body (ask if you’re not sure!). This doesn’t mean that they are not a professional; they may just have had different training or expertise to offer. I am happy to point you in the right direct if you would like to check someone’s professional registration.
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Some talking therapists (including Clinical Psychologists) may offer specific forms of treatment (such as EMDR). Again, it’s important to make sure that individuals are trained to provide specific forms of treatment. Some forms of treatment (like Mindfulness) do not need specific qualifications at present. But it’s still important to ask therapists about their experience in what they practice.
Cognitive behaviour Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a type of talking therapy. It's a common treatment for a range of mental health problems. CBT teaches you coping skills for dealing with different problems. It focuses on how your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes affect your feelings and actions.
Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is a therapy aimed at helping people in recovering from a traumatic event. After any traumatic event the images, thoughts and emotions can remain. These can create ‘overwhelm’, or being back in that moment where you may feel “frozen in time.”
EMDR Therapy helps you process these memories with billateral stimulation and therefore allows normal healing to occur. It effectively helps your brain to join the dots of a neural network so that it recognises an event is in the past rather than still occuring in the present.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is a type of talking therapy. It's based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). But it's specially adapted for people who feel emotions very intensely.
The aim of DBT is to help you:
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Understand and accept your difficult feelings
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Learn skills to manage these feelings
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Become able to make positive changes in your life
'Dialectical' means trying to understand how two things that seem opposite could both be true. For example, accepting yourself and changing your behaviour might feel contradictory. But DBT teaches that it's possible for you to achieve both of these goals together.