In the United States, only those practitioners who have met their State requirements to pass the licensure can use the title of Psychotherapist. They are the Psychiatrist, Clinical Psychologist, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker. It is important to know about their credentials, they will help you choose the right psychotherapist.
Psychiatrist is a medical doctor, with an MD. Has graduated from a medical school and completed a psychiatric residency program. They are licensed to treat psychiatric illness with medications. Some of the residency does not focus on trainings to do psychotherapy. Those who want to do psychotherapy have to go through more advanced training in psychotherapy.
Psychologist: A PhD psychologist has average 5-6 years of graduate training in psychology, usually they have a psychology major in his undergraduate as well. In order to obtain the license as a "psychologist" most of the States require them to do another 1 or 2 years of post-graduate supervised practice in the field.
Marriage Family Therapist, LMFT is a Master level psychologist in California. They have only about 2 years of graduate training. During the graduate training, most of the students spend up to half of their time in getting training at the mental health centers, clinics, psychiatric hospitals and schools in addition to receiving one –on-one supervision of their specialty trainings.
Social worker, LCSW. This is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Usually they have 2 years of graduate training with an emphasis on psychotherapy. The internship is also emphasizing on pursuing psychotherapy, the intern has to do a year or two of supervised post-graduate work before obtaining licensing.
Many people do not know the extent of services that social workers provide in the community due to the misunderstanding and confusion of the terminology, "Social Work and Social Worker". Most of them think that social workers do social work to provide social services to the indigents in the society. In reality, professional social workers serve more people in the mental health setting and private practice than all of the other mental health professionals taken together.
