Meaning & use
psychotherapy
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Meanings
noununcountablemedical
A treatment for mental or emotional problems in which a trained person talks with you regularly to help you understand and change how you feel and behave.
Grammar: Uncountable: 'She is having psychotherapy', not 'a psychotherapy'.
Patterns
- have psychotherapy
- undergo psychotherapy
- psychotherapy for something
- a course of psychotherapy
After the accident, he had six months of psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy can help people manage anxiety and low mood.
She is training to provide psychotherapy to children.
nouncountablemedical
A particular method or school of this kind of talking treatment.
Grammar: Countable when it means a specific method: 'a psychotherapy', 'several psychotherapies'.
Patterns
- a form of psychotherapy
- different psychotherapies
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a widely used psychotherapy.
The clinic offers several psychotherapies, including group work.
Word forms
| plural | psychotherapies |
|---|
Common combinations
- have psychotherapy
- He has psychotherapy once a week.
- undergo psychotherapy
- Patients may undergo psychotherapy before surgery.
- a course of psychotherapy
- The doctor recommended a course of psychotherapy.
- psychotherapy session
- Her psychotherapy session lasts fifty minutes.
- cognitive behavioral psychotherapy
- Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy focuses on changing thought patterns.
Synonyms and how they differ
- therapy
- The shorter, more general word; it can also mean physical treatment, so psychotherapy is clearer when you mean talking treatment.
- counseling
- Usually shorter-term help with a specific problem, while psychotherapy often explores deeper patterns over a longer period.
- analysis
- A long, deep form of psychotherapy based on Freudian ideas; it is narrower and more specialized than psychotherapy.
Word family
- psychotherapist noun
- The trained person who gives psychotherapy.
- psychotherapeutic adjective
- Relating to psychotherapy.
- psychiatry noun
- A branch of medicine that treats mental illness, often with drugs as well as talking.
- psychology noun
- The scientific study of the mind and behavior.
Commonly confused: psychotherapy or psychiatry?
psychotherapy vs psychiatry
Psychiatry is a medical specialty and can prescribe medicine; psychotherapy is a talking treatment and may be given by someone who is not a doctor.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'psychotherapy' correctly.
Choose one answer.
Option 0 is correct because psychotherapy is uncountable in this general sense and treats mental or emotional problems. Option 1 wrongly adds 'a'. Option 2 wrongly uses the plural for a single course of treatment. Option 3 is wrong because psychotherapy does not treat a broken arm.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “psychotherapy”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.