What should I look for in a Counselor/ Psychotherapist?
 
  If you should want to see a Counselor or a Psychotherapist, you should first make sure they are termed qualified counselor or psychotherapist either with the Singapore Association of Counseling, Association of Group and Individual Therapy, or the Association for Marital and Family Therapy. All these organizations issue codes of ethics by which their members have to abide.
There are no licensing bodies in Singapore governing the counseling or psychotherapy services at the moment. However, if the counselor or psychotherapist has obtained full membership of professional counseling bodies, they would have gone through substantial training with practicum experience.

There are many different kinds of counseling and psychotherapy services, and it can be difficult to know the differences between them and the different treatment modalities. If you are at all concerned about a potential therapist's credentials, do not be afraid to ask them what training they have done; do they have regular supervision of their work; what experience they have had; and what is their code of ethics. It is your right to interview a number of practitioners before making your choice.

Besides competency and qualifications of a counselor or psychotherapist, one crucial factor is choosing the right person whom you think he or she can help you. Ask yourself if you feel comfortable telling this person intimate details of your life; do you feel safe with them; do you like the way they act towards you; do you feel respected and heard.

The best way to locate a therapist is through a recommendation from someone who has a problem similar to yours and has had a good experience with that particular therapist. Since it is unlikely that your acquaintances will have a similar problem and be willing to tell you about their therapy, it is good to have other options.

Since there are no governing bodies in the counseling field, people can call themselves a therapist, a psychotherapist, an analyst, a counselor, a marriage counselor, a hypnotherapist, or a sex therapist and not have had any formal training.

In EMCC, all the counselors/ therapists have obtained post-graduate qualifications in counseling. A small number of them are provisional members of professional counseling bodies. This means that they are either completing their post-graduate training or undergoing clinical supervision.

 
     
 
How does counseling or psychotherapy work?
 
  Counseling and psychotherapy can take many forms depending on the theoretical orientation of the counselor or psychotherapist. It is interesting to note that counseling structure, model, and technique only account for 15% of a positive experience in counseling; the relationship between the counselor and customers account for 30% of the experience; placebo, hope, and/or expectancy by the customer 15%; and extra-therapeutic (which refers to anything that happens outside the consultation room) takes 15%.

In short, there are no hard and fast rules what make counseling work. It is a fluid process with an ultimate goal that the customer obtain a better sense of self, become more responsible for decisions made, and acquire a heightening sense of awareness of one’s inner state.		  
     
 
How successful is counseling and psychotherapy?
 
 

The success of counseling and psychotherapy could be rather subjective. Sometimes customers expect counseling to work like medication, a quick fix to the symptoms. However, counseling could be a long drawn process if it deals with the personhood rather than the symptoms alone.

Professional counselors and psychotherapists would usually look for incremental changes in the customers. From the experience of EMCC, customers who attend a minimum number of sessions, say 4 to 8 sessions, have found counseling helpful.