How do Mental Health Professionals use titles and descriptors?
Mental Health Professional, Mental Health Practitioner are generic terms that may refer to anyone with professional credentials in the mental health field including social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, marriage and family therapists, drug and alcohol counselors, licensed professional counselor, etc. Mental Health Practitioner is the designation used by the IRS to describe all mental health professionals with the exception of physicians. Therapist is a term can apply to a number of occupations (i.e. physical therapist, occupational therapist, massage therapist, or mental health therapist.) Many MHPs use this term because it is descriptive in that a therapist is one who does therapy. Therapy is the process where the therapist and the client work diligently towards a goal. Some MHPs won’t use this term because they feel the client may experience the term as intimidating. The connotation may be seen as while “anyone might need wise counsel, only those who have big problems need thera
