Mental Health Definitions

As a service to the community, the OACCPP is providing the information below to help determine the differences between Counsellor, Consultant, Psychotherapist, and Psychometrist.

Counsellor:

A professional whose practice involves the primary function of informing, advising, guiding, educating, coaching. The practice of counselling, includes but is not limited to clinical, mental health counselling, but rather incorporates in its mandate, guidance and education to individuals, families and/or groups.

Click for further details on Coaching as it relates to the Mental Health Community

Consultant:

Any person who provides consulting services in the form of education and information to individual professionals groups, or organizations in the public or private sector.

Psychotherapist:

Psychotherapy, as distinct from counselling, is generally used to denote services which provide specialized interventions (as distinct from "education" or "coaching" in the treatment of mental disorders or the problems of everyday adjustment). The term "Psychotherapy" is generally felt to include techniques utilized by professionals educated in one or more psychotherapy paradigms, such as, for example Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, Rational Emotive Psychotherapy, Reality Therapy, Cognitive Psychotherapy, Psychosynthesis, Adlerien Psychology, Client-centered Psychotherapy. Counselling is a process which can include psychotherapeutic techniques but is, generally speaking, educational in its aim and of shorter duration. The goal of psychotherapy is to encourage understanding of the problem through the generation of insight and the building of trust in the therapeutic relationship. Adjunctive to this, is the therapist's mandate to foster a warm and trusting therapeutic alliance in order to encourage the client to engage freely in exploration and expression of presenting problems.

Psychometrist:

A Psychometrist or Psychometrician is an individual who engages in the administration of testing instruments in the mental health field. Such individuals are also educated in the statistical analysis of data deriving from such tests, and many psychometrists are hired to prepare reports based on data analysis and interpretation of results. Psychometrists generally work under the supervision of registered Psychologists where certain testing materials are concerned.