Introduction to the medical treatment of psychological counseling and psychotherapy With the change of medical model from biological model to biopsychosocial medical model and the development of modern society, there is an increasing demand for psychological counseling and treatment, so what exactly is psychological counseling and psychotherapy? When it comes to counseling and psychotherapy, of course, we must mention psychological disorders or mental illnesses. The general understanding is that only when there are psychological disorders and mental illnesses do we see a psychologist, and this understanding is one-sided, and part of the role of counseling is to help people grow. Next, let’s look at what counseling and psychotherapy are. Counseling 1. What is counseling Counseling is a process in which professionals, i.e. counselors, use psychology and related knowledge, follow psychological principles, and help seekers solve their psychological problems through various techniques and methods. 2.The object of psychological counseling The most general and main object of psychological counseling is the healthy people, or the subhealthy people with psychological problems, not the “sick people” that people often misunderstand. The main targets of psychological counseling can be divided into three categories: first, those who are mentally normal but have encountered real problems related to psychology and ask for help; second, those who are mentally normal but have mental health problems and ask for help; and third, those who are special, i.e., patients with clinically cured mental illness. It can be seen that the main targets of psychological counseling are not all psychologically “sick” people, but the problems to be solved by psychological counseling, such as marriage and family, career selection, parent-child relationship, children’s education, interpersonal relationship, study, love, sexuality, self-development, anxiety, depression, stress coping, etc., are problems that normal people have to face in all stages of life. In a sense, psychological counseling has a health care role in maintaining mental health. Psychotherapy is the process of treating psychological disorders by using clinical psychology techniques and methods, guided by the theory of clinical psychology and bridged by a good doctor-patient relationship. According to the scientific principle of defining various things, the definition of psychotherapy has only one sentence: “Psychotherapy is the process of correction of psychological and behavioral problems of the helper by the psychotherapist.” 2. Object of psychotherapy: patients suffering from psychological disorders. (1) Counseling and therapy are part of the same helping process, and the theories and methods used are often the same, for example, the theories and methods of visitor-centered therapy or rational emotion therapy used by counseling psychologists and the same theories and techniques used by psychotherapists. (2) The clients with whom they work are often similar. For example, a counselor and a psychotherapist may both be dealing with a client’s marital problems. (3) They are similar in their emphasis on helping the client grow and change. Both counseling and psychotherapy hope to achieve change and growth in the client through the interaction between the helper and the client. (4) Both focus on establishing a good interpersonal relationship between the helper and the helper, which is considered necessary to help the helper change and grow. 2, the main differences: (1) the difference in the object of work: the object of psychological counseling is generally not the patient, to a large extent, the basic mental state of health, but the existence of psychological conflict in the subhealthy state of people. (2) Differences in the nature of problems: Psychological counseling focuses on various problems encountered by normal people, such as interpersonal problems in daily life, problems in career selection, problems in the education process, problems in marriage and family, etc. The scope of psychological therapy is mainly adapted to the needs of people with mental illnesses, psychosomatic illnesses, physical illnesses and social illnesses. The scope of psychotherapy is mainly for certain neurological disorders, certain sexual perversions, psychological disorders, behavioral disorders, psychosomatic diseases, psychiatric patients in recovery, etc. (3) Difference in consultation time: Psychological consultation takes less time, and the number of consultations is generally from one to several times, while psychotherapy takes longer, with several to dozens of sessions, or even more, and can be completed only after years and months. (4) Differences at the therapeutic level: Counseling is conducted at the consciousness level, with more emphasis on its educational, supportive, and guiding work, focusing on identifying and developing the factors already present with the visitor’s own inner self; or providing suggestions for improvement based on the analysis of existing conditions. Certain schools of psychotherapy, working mainly in the unconscious sphere and with a confrontational nature to their work, focus on rebuilding the patient’s personality. (5) Differences in therapeutic goals: psychotherapeutic work is more directly directed to certain limited and specific goals; counseling is more ambiguous and its goal is to bring about change and progress in the person.