If you have tried to find your way around online information about psychology, psychotherapy, or other related careers in mental health you will know that getting hold of clear, good quality information is extremely hard. There are many different routes and training programmes, different types of therapy, long training programmes, short training programmes, and a fair bit of overlap between them. In the UK at least there is a group trying to make more sense of this confusion - the Psychology Professionals Network. This is their website https://www.nwppn.nhs.uk/
I hope that if you check in with them that you will find useful and clear information to help you decide what path might suit you best.
On this website my aim is to provide good, clear, safe, and supportive information that will help you in any career that draws on basic psychological knowledge and skills. Success in many different jobs is super-charged by the relationships you have with others - often no matter how good your technical skills are you also have to be able to work with and alongside others. In the psychological professions and careers that draw on psychological knowledge and skills, your ability to engage another person is likely to be essential. In therapy this process of engaging another person (or people) is knowns as 'therapeutic relationship' or the 'therapeutic alliance'. And the therapeutic relationship is a vital part of any successful therapy - after all no matter how brilliant a therapist is, the client or patient needs to come back to the next session.
I'm very keen to find good online material about the therapeutic alliance. - This video explains some of the research background explaining why the therapeutic alliance is important
It's been more difficult than I expected to find video examples that demonstrate a good therapeutic alliance, but perhaps that is because they are so variable that an example might be misleading. If you find any good examples online that are freely available please share them - you can contact me via twitter or email. I've included on the webpages a video demonstration of Carl Rogers conducting a session. You can find it under the tab "Video Demonstrations'. Carl Rogers, the founder of humanistic counselling, identified the critical role of warmth, positive regard and empathy in psychotherapy, three pillars of the therapeutic alliance. He demonstrates them very clearly in this demonstration.
Oh and Orygen, which is an Australian mental health organisations has many more excellent resources that a specifically related to young people's mental health. You can find those here https://www.orygen.org.au/Training/Resources
