 Something I get to do as a therapist that I never expected as a benefit of the job is being able to help people I love navigate finding their own therapist. Due to my ethics code, I could not provide therapy to someone who I already have a relationship with. However, I can use my knowledge of the field to help them find who they need to see. Have you ever looked for a therapist and seen a string of acronyms you don’t understand? Do you need an MMFT, LMFT-Associate? A PhD, LP? A Psychiatrist? An MA, LCSW Certified in EMDR? I hope you will be able to use this as a guide to find a therapist that fits your needs if you are looking and overwhelmed by the endless acronyms.
Before we get into this, I would start with an encouragement to find someone that IS licensed. There are plenty of people masquerading as therapists that have no business doing so. If you want help with mental health, step 1 is finding a LICENSED clinician. That means dump your life coach that just makes decisions you should be making or yells at you. Degrees-Degrees are simply education. Someone can have a degree without having a license. Most licensed clinicians will have at least a graduate degree. This would mean they have completed a 4 year bachelor degree, or undergraduate degree, and went back for another degree. Exceptions would be Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselors (LCDC) or Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) Therapists. We will be focusing on graduate degrees.
Licenses-For someone to have a license, they must have completed a graduate degree (Listed above) with the relevant coursework for their field, completed a state test to prove competency on the material, and have completed a determined number of supervised hours by an experienced clinician (or may be in the process of doing so).
Certifications-Certifications would be the 3rd step for a licensed clinician. If someone has a degree and a state license, certifications tend to show areas of interest for someone and may give you more confidence if you are wanting help in a certain area. This is not to say someone has to be certified in something to be able to help, it just means they may have more training and possibly experience. Then again there are many clinicians with a tremendous amount of experience that choose to not get certified in one approach. They may even have all the necessary training without completing the process to be certified.
Hopefully, this will give you some clarity when searching for a therapist. Look for someone that is qualified and seems competent in the area you need help. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions.
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 Disclaimer: I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Associate with a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy. I am not a Psychiatrist or medical doctor. Medication is something Americans tend to be incredibly comfortable with. According to a study by the CDC from 2011-2014: 1 in 9 Americans take antidepressants compared with 1 in 50 three decades prior. In many ways, this is a necessary treatment. What seems to be an issue is the way it can be handed out. For example, if I break my foot there is a protocol I would follow. I would see a doctor, maybe have surgery, take some medication to manage the pain, take some time off work depending on the severity, and track the progress until I can make changes. I would not be on crutches forever and I would not be taking pain pills forever. I use those things for that season where my foot is broken. In other cases, I might be dependent on medication for life. We know these things about physical issues but when it comes to mental health, we have a different view. If I break my foot, I will probably see a doctor that specializes in this area. I probably would not be comfortable with my general practitioner performing a complicated surgery on my heart or brain. However, we will take psychotropic medication from someone that does not specialize in that field. And it can help, right? That is why we do it. We feel better after we take it so we do not really see an issue. The physical equivalent here would be hobbling around on a broken foot and taking pain pills to get us through without treating the source of the pain-the break. There are many reasons why this is important, but let me highlight one of them. When it comes to depression and suicidal thoughts, sometimes people are too depressed to make a suicide attempt. With the little energy they have, it sounds like too much work. While this keeps them alive, it is not how someone would want to live either. Here is where a big difference can come in: If this person were to go to a psychiatrist, they may be given anti-depressants that they take for a week and then return. When they return they have an opportunity to explain if their suicidal thoughts have become worse or more accessible. If they receive the same medication from their general practitioner that asks them to return in a month or three it may be too late. While this may seem extreme, depression can literally be a life or death situation and it needs to be addressed by people who know the spectrum of potential outcomes. There are many things in the area of mental health, like with physical health, that may require lifelong medication. However, there are other things we face in life that can be overcome in therapy. There is a difference between shoving down the emotions we have and addressing the root cause of these emotions. If you are not crying anymore but you are not happy anymore either, you may have dealt with your pain or grief in a way that left its own damage. Here are some tips to change the way you deal with your medication:
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