How many psychological therapies are there?

A Layperson’s Guide to Psychological Therapies Series

Gregg Chapman

Chapman Marques Psychology & Relationship Counselling

There are numerous psychological therapies.

Wikipedia lists them here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychotherapies

The Australian Psychological Society (APS) comments in the APS document Evidence-Based Psychological Interventions in the Treatment of Mental Disorders: A Literature Review (3rd edition) on psychotherapies here:

https://www.psychology.org.au/getmedia/23c6a11b-2600-4e19-9a1d-6ff9c2f26fae/Evidence-based-psych-interventions.pdf

In a practical sense, because there can be considerable time and money spent in learning a therapy, most Australian psychologists offer a limited range of therapies. An individual therapist has only so much time to learn and become proficient in a given school of therapy. The most popular psychotherapy is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). It has numerous variants. Other popular and effective therapies include: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT); Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT); Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT); Gestalt Therapy; Gottman Relationship Therapy; Interpersonal Therapy (IPT); Motivational Interviewing (MI); Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET); and, Schema Therapy.

Therapies appeal to therapists for different reasons. One major reason is that a given therapy has been empirically validated in research studies.

Your therapist can best decide on the most appropriate therapy for you.

© Gregg Chapman, 2021