Client or Patient?

I’ve been called both. Most of my therapists have been MD/shrinks and have have rigged both long-term and short-term hospitalizations and so there, and in the future, I’ve thought of myself patient.

I’m sick, no doubt about that!!! And under the care of an MD I prefer to be a patient. Even in my largely therapy days, I still saw an MD/shrink.

If you don’t have mental disorders, I can see where you’re not sick, and would rather be thought of as a client. I don’t believe that either sobriquet will harm the therapy you receive, though,

All my therapist have used the term client.

My T uses patient and client interchangeably. She works in a hospital outpatient clinic as well as the inpatient ward. I prefer patient because I feel it acknowledges the power differential better and I'm diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. At a counselling place I briefly went to for life stuff, I preferred client.

Client. I feel so strongly about this. I was deeply traumatized by medical people as a child- people who seemed to think my feelings were irrelevant, and who treated me with what I consider now to be violence. I have zero interest in replicating that kind of relationship with a therapist, and to me the term “patient” is something that gives doctors a license to inflict pain. No thanks.

I don’t like the imbalance of power implications with the term patient.

I'm a patient to my T, although he is not an MD and I don't see him in a clinic.

This was one of the early questions I asked him: who am I to you? He did not hesitate a second and said that I'm his patient. That calmed me. I would not have wanted him to consider me his client. I am not his client because he does not offer me a service. He is treating me. It would be quite normal to refuse to serve a difficult or unpleasant client. However, with a patient you are committed. That's my view. It does not mean that he is somehow superior to me - I'm pretty sure he admits that I am smarter than him. Rather, it means that he is mightily fighting for my emotional freedom and health, even if that fighting often also means fighting simultaneously with me.

I admit that I am a very difficult patient - I doubt any service providers would have put up with me nor I with them.

I do too. I also had experiences that I now consider violent and it's a big part of my ongoing work to leave this far, far behind.

No thanks is right, as far as I am concerned. Um...wait. How about just NO?

Client sounds more professional to me

Looks like some therapists found this thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/psychothera...cross_from_us/

Those guys are so full of themselves and yet so very clueless about what consumers, customers or even clients think about anything.

All the therapists I have ever seen have used the term « patient ». Same with their websites: every single therapist website I have read used the term « patient ». So telling.

Once I pointed out to my last therapist that I was a client, not a patient.
She was baffled then defensive and implied I was making a big deal out of nothing.

I am a paying customer, hiring a therapist for the service they are providing but they see themselves as doctors even though a lot of them barely studied two years in college (if at all) and what they’re doing is not remotely scientific.
I find the term « patient » incredibly condenscending as I am not sick. Pretty sure it also comes from the outdated model of psychoanalysis. In my country anyway.
So any therapist who uses it gets immediately discarded. One of the many reasons I am no longer in therapy. And the better for it.

To my Psychiatrist I am a patient to my therapist I am a client. It seems right that way.

I don't know how my T refferes to his patients/clients and I honestly don't care at all.

This is definitely how the Reddit thread made me feel. So condescending.

Merriam-Webster defines patient:

patient
noun pa·tient \ ˈpā-shənt \
1 a : an individual awaiting or under medical care and treatment. i.e. cancer patients psychiatric patients
b : the recipient of any of various personal services

According to this definition, I would say that the first definition would be inappropriate despite the example 'psychiatric patients' because you can only be under medical care and treatment (note that it doesn't say medical care OR treatment) by a doctor. In other words, a psychiatrist or psychologist.

However, the second definition does fit the bill. Often I find that the colloquial use of a word impacts my understanding of it and it feels wrong to me when someone uses it in a way that is technically correct but outside of the generally accepted meaning of the word. Anyway, I have no real personal investment in the matter regarding this particular word, but the thread got me curious so I looked it up and thought to share what I found.