A mental health professional is a health care practitioner who offers services for the purpose of improving an individual's mental health or to treat mental illness. This broad category includes psychiatrists (D.O. or M.D.), clinical psychologists (Psy.D or Ph.D.), clinical social workers (MSW or MSSW), psychiatric nurses, mental health counselors, professional counselors, pharmacists, as well as many other professionals. These professionals often deal with the same illnesses, disorders, conditions, and issues; however, their scope of practice differs. The most significant difference between mental health professionals are the laws regarding required education and training across the various professions.
Read more about Mental Health Professional: Psychiatrist, Clinical Psychologist, Counseling Psychologist or Psychotherapist, Behavior Analyst, Certified Mental Health Professional, School Psychologist, Social Worker, Psychiatric and Mental Health Nurse
Famous quotes containing the words mental health, mental, health and/or professional:
“All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysands to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defence. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The deeply thoughtful and human consciousness of a Macbeth is not found in comedy. Comic action tends to be as Bergson described it, physical or purblind, instead of highly conscious. Similarly, the great comic actor specializes in the presentation of mental obtuseness.”
—William G. McCollom (b. 1911)
“It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Many young girls are ... becoming trained nurses, whose gentle ministrations in the sick-room, skilled touch, patient watchfulness and unwearied vigils, are as great factors in the care of the sick, as are the professional physicians.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)