Who is a psychologist, psychotherapist and why are they needed? Despite the increased interest in psychology, psychological literature, various trainings and seminars in recent years, the level of psychological culture in our country remains low. Although it has long been considered the norm to have your own hairdresser, dentist as well as a gynecologist, the issue of turning to a psychologist remains, for many, a difficult question. There can be many reasons for this, but there are several of the most common ones. For example, now a huge amount of information on psychology is available to anyone and they say that if you want and have free time, you can independently find answers to all your questions and solve your difficulties. However, it is unlikely that any of the readers will use a medical textbook to treat their health problems. It’s even more difficult to imagine how to give yourself a beautiful haircut using a tutorial, but in principle, you can pull out a tooth yourself, but it will be about the same as becoming “your own psychologist,” because “your own dentist” sounds just as ridiculous and simple funny. Any person, of course, is capable of a lot on his own, it’s hard to argue with this, but I doubt whether it will be reliable, professional and safe. The second, common reason is due to the fact that people, for the most part, do not quite understand the differences between a psychologist , psychotherapist and psychiatrist. But the specifics of the work of these three professions are different. And the purpose of this information is to help you understand the process that you can get involved in if you want to turn to a professional, but due to incomplete or inaccurate knowledge, you doubt the correctness of choosing a specialist. I would immediately like to debunk the wrong opinion that exists among people – that mentally ill people turn to psychologists and psychotherapists. This is not true - only psychiatrists deal with people with mental illnesses. And psychologists and psychotherapists work with healthy people. Psychologist. Psychologists are engaged in science and teaching, they can conduct trainings, help with choosing a profession, work on a helpline, test intelligence levels, and also conduct short-term, non-durable counseling. A psychologist without special retraining cannot engage in long-term work with a client, i.e. cannot engage in psychotherapy. Psychologist is a specialist with basic psychological education who knows methods for assessing mental phenomena and the ability to correct them. Psychotherapist. According to the definition of the European Association of Psychotherapy in the framework of the Strasbourg Declaration of October 21, 1990, psychotherapy is a special discipline from the field of humanities, the exercise of which is a free and independent profession. Psychotherapy has a variety of therapeutic methods aimed at working with the client. Each client can contact a specialist in a different direction. Although, often, the choice of a specialist is based precisely on the personality of the therapist and not on his psychotherapeutic affiliation with any direction and method of work. In the process of such work, new opportunities for the client are revealed; with long-term work, the clients’ existential anxieties (associated with loneliness, death, issues of freedom, meaninglessness). Long-term work has the advantage that it is possible to solve “long-standing” difficulties, i.e. having roots in the distant past, and not arising at a given or recent point in time. A specialist with this level of training can conduct short-term consulting work, as well as long-term psychotherapy in individual and group formats. A psychotherapist is a specialist who helps a person solve problems related to mental health, but not psychopathology. Psychopathology is dealt with by a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist. In psychiatry, the main treatment method is