Psychotherapy, also called talk therapy, is a type of mental health treatment.

It’s often used either alone or with medications to treat mental health conditions. During a psychotherapy session, you talk to a doctor or a licensed mental health care professional to identify and change troubling thoughts. Psychotherapy can help you deal with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and stress, or deal with life events such as trauma or the death of a loved one.

​​Psychotherapy vs. counseling

These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they do mean two different things. They are both mental health therapy, but the length of time and purpose of care are different.

Counseling tends to be short-term and usually focuses on creating solutions for a specific issue, for example, substance misuse. Psychotherapy is more likely to be a long-term treatment and can focus on multiple issues or more complex mental health conditions.

What Issues Does Psychotherapy Treat?

Psychotherapy can treat a wide range of issues, including several mental health conditions and stressors or conflicts in your daily life.

Mental health conditions that psychotherapy can treat include:

• Depression
• Bipolar disorder
• Anxiety disorders such as social anxiety and phobias
• Eating disorders including anorexia and bulimia
• Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Schizophrenia
• Alcohol and substance abuse
• Personality disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and borderline personality disorder
• Adjustment disorders

You may not have a mental illness, but psychotherapy may help you deal with daily issues or stressful situations. It may be able to help you through things such as:

• A medical condition such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, or chronic pain
• Trauma, whether it’s physical or emotional
• Stress
• Death of a friend or family member
• Quitting smoking
• Divorce or issues with a family member
• Job challenges
• Sexual issues
• Emotional problems such as rage or unusually aggressive behaviors

Benefits of Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy can be helpful for a range of issues. It has been shown to help relieve at least some symptoms for about three-quarters of people who take part in it. It has been shown to help people:

• Identify behaviors, emotions, and ideas and learn how to modify them
• Understand and identify their life problems or events — such as a major illness, death in the family, loss of a job, or divorce — and help them recognize which aspects of those problems they may be able to solve or improve
• Regain a sense of control and pleasure in life
• Learn healthy coping techniques and problem-solving skills
• Learn to recognize if they are at risk for self-harm and learn tools to manage those feelings
• Recover from abuse

Psychotherapy may also help you with daily functioning, including things such as:

• Improving relationships at work and home
• Having fewer sick days
• Improving symptoms and having less disability with a chronic medical condition
• Increasing life satisfaction
• Actively participating in medical decision-making when you have health issues.