Q: What is the difference between professional counseling and psychotherapy? A: Not much. Especially concerning mental health treatment, the terms are often substituted for each other. In school and social service settings, "counseling" may include guidance, advisement, and referral to outside agencies but this is a different type of counseling. Q: Then what is professional counseling / psychotherapy? A: Professional Counseling includes the evaluation and treatment of mental / emotional conditions. Mostly, counseling / psychotherapy uses "talk" to help people become less depressed, anxious, or frightened and cope with situations in their lives. Q: I've heard that counselors try to get inside your head and change you. Is this true? A: No. Like all therapies the primary goal is relief from discomfort and rehabilitation / recovery. The psychotherapist works with emotional pain and wounds to alleviate depression and anxiety. Psychotherapy requires courage and effort on the part of the client. Once people address the emotional pain in their lives, they are better able to improve their relationships, enhance self-esteem, cease self-destructive behavior, and so on. Q: Are there different approaches to psychotherapy and counseling? A: Yes. These include rational-emotive, psychodynamic, behavior modification, and others. Eric Groh employs a combination of cognitive and person-centered therapies. He has found this combination is effective with many common manifestations of depression and anxiety. Q: The advertisements for antidepressant medication say that depression is a "chemical imbalance in the brain." Does this mean that psychotherapy can't benefit me? A: No. In fact, most of the current research suggests that whereas medication and psychotherapy alone produce about the same results when used to treat mild to moderate depression, combining the two produces the best results.