Quote:
Originally Posted by Amyjay
Where I am (not US) I only really trust clinical psychologists. Here they have around 7 years training in university and practise before they can be licensed. I just don't trust that other counselors with lesser training have the intelligence and knowledge to assist me with what I need help with.
I also like the person I work with to be continually upskilling and keeping up with current research because the understanding and treatment of the neurobiology of dissociation and complex trauma is such a rapidly developing field. I definitely would not work with a "run of the mill" counselor.
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Do clinical psychologists only have 7 years of uni? Around here it's 12. 3 years for basic psychologist, 4 for healthcare psychology (= a psychologist who can treat mental illnesses). Most psychologists that treat you are healthcare psychologists. Then after a few years of work you can try to get accepted into a Clinical Psychology program where upon graduation you'll be a clinical psychologist.
Clinical psychologists here supervise healthcare psychologists (not supervising like the HCP can only treat how the CP says she should - just that they discuss their cases a lot), healthcare psychologists are qualified therapists though. CPs also treat some of the very complex cases. Not to say that all complex cases see a CP or at least not all the time (I think I've had 5 sessions with 1, which was in addition to other therapy by another T (one I saw on Monday the other on Wed), and about 20 with another, when I needed multiple trauma T's and he was my trauma T's supervisor so I also saw him) but they don't generally treat short-term or 'straightforward' cases. (By short term I mean: if you only need 20 sessions total before you're all better, you'll probably not see a CP. If you're in a multi-year treatment, you might see a CP for 1 or 2 or 6 or 20 sessions throughout.)