Psychotherapy is an interaction of mutual agreement between a therapist and a client or patient with the sole purpose of improving the mental, emotional and at times spiritual welfare of the client.
It comes from a combination of two Greek words; psyche and therapia, Psyche refers to the mind, the soul, and therapia stands for treatment.
Combined it stands for healing of the soul.
Psychotherapists are some of the busiest health care providers and it is not hard to understand why.
In 1987, psychotherapy was a 4.
2 billion dollar industry according to an unofficial survey.
The results from the same survey show that a little over 79 million Americans sought the service of a psychotherapist.
This is the year 2011 and the population has grown tremendously.
Furthermore, the job industry has become more cut throat, the cost of living has increased, and family values have deteriorated, leaving people mentally bothered and disturbed.
Today, the numbers have more than tripled because all these above mentioned combined factors have made the situation from bad to worse.
Psychotherapy was originally known by a different name.
The methods used were not the ones that we see today.
Originally, treatment was done by hypnotizing the patient and then making suggestions to them that were supposed to influence the well-being of the patient.
It involved putting the under, which is a way of saying; putting a person in a sort of active sleep, where they are unconscious or subconscious, but highly suggestible and receptive to the external influence of the therapist.
Of course the methods of psychotherapist diversified and it was no longer possible to use one single method to cure all the mental ailments.
In the past, it was thought that to need psychotherapy, one needed to be out of their mind.
It is becoming more and more common that there are a lot of reasons why someone would need the service of a psychotherapist.
Feelings of extreme stress, emotional instability, traumatic events, abusive relationships and mild thoughts of suicide should not be taken lightly and the sufferer must seek psychotherapist.
There are various ways by which psychotherapy may be administered.
There are approaches like psychoanalysis, the cognitive approach, even hypnotherapy.
However hypnotherapy should be supervised by experts because there have been records of unpleasant effects of hypnotism.
For major psychotic issues, hypnotherapy may backfire.
For the process to be effective there is need for the client to be motivated, for the therapist to be properly trained and skillful and for the patient to be completely honest with the therapist.
It is also important that they establish a bond of mutual trust for any of the sessions to be effective.
Factors like the pricing is at the discretion of the therapist and the period of time depends on how well the sessions go and other underlying factors like the support of family members.
In this art, there are different professionals each with a specialized job.
They include social workers, clinical psychologists, mental health counselors and family therapists.
You must choose the one who has expertise in particular problem that you suffer from.