Clinical Psychology
Clinical psychology is a discipline of psychology that is concerned with the study and application of psychology for the purposes of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based illnesses and disorders. It also seeks to promote personal development and overall well-being. Central to the practice of this branch of psychology are psychological assessment and psychotherapy. Clinical psychologists usually work in a private practice or a hospital, but some may work on research projects, forensic studies, teaching and consultation.
Clinical psychology is a regulated field in many countries with mental health practitioners having to be licensed to practice in their field. This licensing comes usually after extensive graduate studies and clinical internships plus training at psychological institutes. The work that is done by clinical psychologists is done within the framework of various therapeutic models. These models all consist of a formal relationship between the clinical psychologist and the client. The client can be an individual or it can be a family or group of individuals who come in for a therapy session.
In clinical psychology, a set of procedures is performed to explore the nature of psychological problems and set up a therapeutic relationship where they can be explored. Part of the process encourages new ways of thinking, feeling behaving and reacting to a situation. There are four main approaches in this branch of psychology and they include psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, existential-humanistic, and family systems therapy. While some clinical psychologists specialize in just one of these branches, there is now a tendency to use a variety of approaches in therapy and to be more eclectic in terms of therapeutic practice. This allows more work to be done in an open and diverse way and exposes the clients to the best features of the different therapeutic approaches.
Many people are fascinated by clinical psychology and it is quite a popular major for graduate students. For people who want to go into a helping profession, this branch of psychology offers them the opportunity to work directly with clients and build a therapeutic relationship with them. They can see the fruits of their labor really pay off when a client makes an important breakthrough or turns a corner after significant psychological distress. This field of psychology can be extremely interesting and rewarding for those who choose it as a career path and extremely helpful to those who seek help from these professionals to sort through behavioral, emotional and psychological issues.
