What is psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy is a process that occurs within the context of a supportive, therapeutic (healing) relationship in which one person (the therapist) helps another person (the client/patient) to increase self-awareness and in doing so create positive change in themselves and their life. The process usually involves confronting and overcoming some particular challenges that the client/patient is facing, which may involve examining and modifying patterns of thinking, behaviours, ways of relating to self and others, and processing emotions.

The College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) defines psychotherapy as: “Treating, by means of psychotherapy technique, delivered through a therapeutic relationship, an individual’s serious disorder of thought, cognition, mood, emotional regulation, perception or memory that may seriously impair the individual’s judgment, insight, behaviour, communication or social functioning.” Only certain regulated health professionals are legally allowed to practice the “controlled act of psychotherapy” (as defined above) and to use the title “psychotherapist.”