Psychotherapy training: Psychotherapist activities

After completing your psychotherapy training, you will work independently with people seeking psychological or emotional support. You will use scientifically sound methods to promote changes in thinking, feeling and behavior. After psychotherapy training, you can take on the following tasks as a psychotherapist, for example:

• Prepare a well-founded psychotherapy by inquiring about a client's life background and current personal difficulties and working out a diagnosis together.
• In psychotherapy, establish a relationship of trust with the client, define therapy goals and select a suitable method.
• Accompanying people in stressful life situations - for example with relationship problems, identity or self-esteem crises or professional challenges.
• Specialist treatment of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders, trauma-related disorders, personality disorders and psychosomatic illnesses.
• Apply therapeutic methods - e.g. cognitive-behavioral, depth-psychological, body-psychotherapeutic or systemic approaches - and use them appropriately, as learned in psychotherapy training.
• If necessary, work together with other specialists (e.g. doctors, psychiatrists), especially if medical clarification or cooperation is required.
• The activity is carried out in compliance with the cantonal license to practice and the legal requirement that psychotherapy in Switzerland may be carried out within the framework of the psychotherapy model with a doctor's prescription.

This work as a psychotherapist requires empathy, responsibility and continuing education, further training - but it also offers the opportunity to support people in the long term and make a difference in society.