Private Psychology

Most people use psychological skills to cope and grow in life. Psychologists are trained to assess and aid the process of coping and growth when people find it difficult to cope and grow by themselves.

Clinical psychologists aims to reduce psychological distress and to enhance and promote psychological well-being. A wide range of psychological difficulties may be dealt with, including anxiety, depression, relationship problems, learning disabilities, child and family problems and serious mental illness.

To assess a client, a clinical psychologist may undertake a clinical assessment using a variety of methods including psychometric tests, interviews and direct observation of behaviour. Assessment may lead to therapy, counselling or advice.

Until recently a big proportion of Psychologists focused extensively on amelioration of abnormality (Clinical Psychologists) in order to enhance coping and growth. However, in the last ten years a significant amount of research has been conducted to assess and enhance the strengths of people to help people to cope and grow better. This branch of psychology is termed as Positive Psychology.

“Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives. Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs.”

Coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and all coaches are not therapists nor consultants.
The coach applies mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal-setting, and other techniques in assisting clients. Coaches are to be distinguished from counselors.
Coaching helps in promoting subjective well being and personal development. Life coaching draws heavily on Positive Psychology.

A clinical Psychologist with interest in coaching and with relevant training can offer both therapy and life coaching of high standard.

What problems can a Psychologist or Counselor help me with?

There are many situations in life that can cause emotional stress- relationship difficulties, caring for young children and ageing parents, a death in the family, coping with illness or disability, pressure at work, fear of redundancy, financial worries, managing dual careers etc.
We offer help to people who suffer from a wide range of these difficulties, which can manifest themselves in ways such as:

The mechanism of therapy
Therapy is a collaborative effort made by the client and the therapist. The therapist helps the client to try and look for the unhelpful patterns in the solutions that s/he and his/her family might have tried. Then may set up some goals - what the client/s want/s to happen, how to achieve them, how long it may take to achieve them. Periodically the goals would be reviewed and on mutual agreement therapy would end.

When might it not be helpful to see a Psychologist or Counselor

In some situations it is important to have specialist help from a multi-disciplinary Mental Health Team, which includes Doctors (Psychiatrists), Nursing staff (Psychiatric Nurses) and Social Workers. We do not provide this type of service and would recommend that you see your GP, who can refer you to the right person, either privately or within the NHS. Examples of where this may be the most helpful course of action include:

If some one is feeling actively suicidal to the extent of recent suicide attempts.
If a person is unable to control drug and alcohol abuse to the extent that you are putting yourself or others at risk (GP can refer to specialist Addiction Services).
If a person is unable to control his anger to the extent of putting others at risk through violence.
If a person is putting children (his/hers' or others') at risk through abuse or neglect.
If some one is currently receiving a service from a Mental Health Team.

Psychological testing is a field characterized by the use of samples of behaviour in order to infer generalizations about a given individual. The technical term for the science behind psychological testing is psychometrics. By samples of behaviour, one means observations over time of an individual performing tasks that have usually been prescribed beforehand. These responses are often compiled into statistical tables that allow the evaluator to compare the behavior of the individual being tested to the responses of a norm group.

Psychological testing is not the same as psychological assessment. Psychological assessment is a process that involves the integration of information from multiple sources, such as psychological tests, and other information such as personal and medical history, description of current symptoms and problems by either self or others, and collateral information (interviews with other persons about the person being assessed). A psychological test is one of the sources of data used within the process of assessment; usually more than one test is used. All psychologists do some level of assessment when providing services to clients or patients, and may use for example, simple checklists to assess some traits or symptoms, but psychological assessment is a more complex, detailed, in-depth process. Typical types of focus for psychological assessment are to provided a diagnosis, assess level of function or disability, help direct treatment, and assess treatment outcome.
A useful psychological measure must be both valid (i.e., actually measures what it claims to measure) and reliable (i.e., internally consistent or give consistent results over time).

This web page presents simplified reading about Psychological therapy, coaching, and testing. This is not academic definition and / or statement of legal or regulation related positions of PrivatePsychology.com.

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