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What Mental Health Disorders Can Therapists Diagnose?

April 1, 2025

Mental health challenges can impact anyone at any point in life and affect millions of people annually.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 20% — that’s one in every five — of people experience mental illness, and one in 20 people experience serious mental illness. NAMI illustrates that mental illness, in all its diagnosable forms, can pose adverse physical, social, and financial effects on a person’s life.

How can you confirm if you’re suffering from mental health issues? Acute self-awareness and astute observation may intimate that you’re displaying the signs of a mental health condition, but sometimes, we may show a tendency to self-diagnose.

Studies show, in fact, that self-diagnosis of psychiatric disorders is on the rise due to the prevalence of social media, online self-assessments, or the anecdotal experiences of others. “In the simplest terms,” notes a study from the University of Colorado Denver, “it occurs when we assert that we have a mental health condition without confirmation from a mental health professional.”

Can therapists diagnose? A mental health professional is the only way to diagnose a mental health condition since self-diagnosing can lead to incorrect conclusions. Sometimes, we might seek answers ourselves because we’re unsure what to do. You might wonder which professional to see, what credentials to look for, and most importantly — who can actually make a proper, official diagnosis.

Whether you might be struggling with depression, anxiety, or other challenges, here’s what you need to know about selecting a therapist, how they make diagnoses, and where to find treatment.

What Is a Therapist?

A therapist is a trained professional experienced in helping you navigate mental, emotional, psychological, and behavioral challenges that can affect your sense of well-being, day-to-day functioning, or interpersonal relationships.

Therapists do this through psychotherapy, where you’ll regularly meet, one-on-one, in a safe space with your therapist to talk through your struggles, experiences, thoughts, and feelings. A therapist is someone to trust and confide in, though not in the same way you might do with friends or family. They’re trained to recognize patterns, provide objective feedback, and guide you toward positive change without judgment, and their aim is not simply to offer you advice but to have an ongoing conversation, session by session, to identify the underlying causes of the mental health issues you may be experiencing.

Through approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (also known as CBT), you can begin to:

Discern how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interconnected

Develop coping strategies

Identify triggers

Process difficult emotions

Improve your relationships

Work through past traumas

By uncovering negative patterns in thinking that may be impacting how you view and perceive the world, you can begin reframing your mental narrative with your therapist’s help.

Different Kinds of Therapists

Therapists come in many forms, each with their own unique and distinct scope of educational background, training, licensing, credentials, and approach to care. Most importantly, each one brings value to helping work through and solve mental health issues.

Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)

A licensed professional counselor is a clinician who typically holds at least a master’s degree in counseling or a similar field, plus supervised clinical experience and licensure. Through patient-focused therapy and counseling, LPCs excel in helping you navigate challenges if you suffer from depression or trauma, are going through major life changes, or might be dealing with marital or relationship troubles.

LPCs may work in an array of settings, from treatment facilities to hospitals, schools to private practice, and may work with individuals, couples, or families.

Psychologists

To practice, a psychologist must hold a doctoral degree (Ph.D., Psy.D., or Ed.D.). Through their training and expertise, they become qualified to diagnose and treat many various mental health conditions through psychotherapy like CBT or DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy). Psychologists are qualified to administer psychological tests and evaluations that assess personality, cognitive abilities, emotional functioning, and specific mental health symptoms — each of which can provide deeper insights for more serious or complex problems.

There is some crossover between a clinical psychologist and a counseling psychologist, with some differences — a clinical psychologist specializes in psychopathology (a focus on mental health conditions) where a counseling psychologist can aid people in addressing physical, social and emotional stressors, notes the Cleveland Clinic.

Psychiatrists

While psychologists possess advanced and sometimes doctoral degrees, they are not officially doctors. A psychiatrist, on the other hand, is a medical doctor who is trained in medicine but specializes in mental health. To become a psychiatrist, you must complete medical school, earn your M.D., and complete a psychiatry residency program.

Psychiatrists are qualified not only to diagnose and treat psychiatric, emotional, behavioral, and mental health disorders through psychotherapy, but they can also prescribe medication.

“Psychiatrists typically treat more complex mental health conditions than psychologists, especially ones that require medication or medical treatments,” says the Cleveland Clinic. “Psychology is the study of the mind, emotions and behavior; whereas psychiatry is the field of medicine focused on diagnosing and treating mental health conditions.” This dual expertise is particularly helpful when a diagnosis from your psychiatrist recommends a treatment plan combining psychotherapy and pharmacological intervention.

Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFT)

Marriage and family therapists, or MFTs, focus on the dynamics of relationships and how family systems impact individual mental health. MFTs must obtain a bachelor’s degree in psychology, counseling, social work, or a related field, then a subsequent master’s-level degree in marriage and family therapy or related field. MFTs treat a diverse range of clinical issues, such as depression, anxiety, and marital/child-parent problems, to resolve conflicts, improve communication, and strengthen relationships. They also work with individuals on various psychological issues, according to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

What’s the difference between an MFT and an LMFT? Both are the same, except that the L in LMFT stands for Licensed, meaning that an LMFT has met their state’s licensure requirements in addition to meeting their educational obligations.

Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)

Experienced in social work and mental health, an LCSW holds a master’s degree in social work and works with people to help them understand and confront the underlying root causes of mental health issues — ranging from mental health disorders to personal obstacles, substance abuse, or trauma. Social workers are experienced in case management and advocacy and offer their services in mental health treatment centers, schools, government agencies, and military organizations.

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Can Therapists Diagnose Mental Health Disorders?

A therapist’s ultimate ability to legally diagnose mental health issues depends on their education, qualifications, licensing, and the laws in the state they practice in. Here’s a clear breakdown:

An LPC’s authority to diagnose varies by state statute. Without it, they must refer their patients to other clinicians with diagnostic ability.

Psychologists are fully qualified to provide official mental health diagnoses.

As medical doctors, psychiatrists can diagnose and treat all mental health disorders.

With their licensure, LMFTs can independently diagnose mental health and substance use disorders.

Like an LPC, the L in LCSW represents the licensure that enables a social worker to diagnose and clinically treat their clients without supervision.

What Determines If a Therapist Can Make a Diagnosis

If you’re considering therapy for yourself or coordinating it for a loved one, you might wonder how therapists diagnose mental health conditions. What factors should you look for?

A clinician’s ability to diagnose depends on their licensure, training, and state regulations. While psychologists and psychiatrists are often the most extensively trained in clinical assessment, LPCs, LMFTs, and LCSWs are also authorized to diagnose mental health disorders in most states — provided they hold the appropriate licensure.

What Mental Health Disorders Can Therapy Help With?

Not only is therapy — from psychotherapy to behavioral therapy and more — available and accessible to everyone of all genders, ages, and backgrounds, but it’s also able to treat all types of mental health issues.

Anxiety

A persistent feeling of fear or dread, accompanied by overreacting in normal situations and physical symptoms like profuse sweating and rapid heartbeat, are part and parcel of anxiety disorder, which affects 40 million adults each year. Thankfully, evidence-based psychotherapy like CBT is proven to effectively treat anxiety, helping you understand why you feel anxious, challenge your thought patterns, and learn new, positive ways of living through anxiety-inducing situations.

Here, your therapist might use CBT or exposure therapy to gradually allow you to face fearful triggers and situations in a safe space, mindfulness techniques to manage worry, or behavioral therapy to develop relaxation skills.

Depression

Feelings of chronic sadness, hopelessness, or a loss of interest in activities that once brought joy typify symptoms of depression, which affects 5% of the global population in a given year. But “psychological treatments can teach new ways of thinking, coping or relating to others,” says the World Health Organization, where CBT can greatly help you address negative thought narratives and begin to defeat your depression to look at and live in the world in a more positive way.

For more severe cases, a psychiatrist might recommend combining your psychotherapy appointments with antidepressant medication to help you gradually overcome depressive episodes when they happen.

Trauma and PTSD

Did you know that about 70% — nearly three-fourths — of people around the globe will experience a major traumatic event during their lifetimes? Although only 5% will go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, suffering from a trauma disorder can lead to reliving a traumatic instance over and over, experiencing nightmares, avoiding people or places that trigger it, and struggling to cope with school, work, or interpersonal relationships.

Trauma-focused therapies help you process these difficult experiences and memories, and a therapist specializing in trauma can help you develop skills to manage triggers and rebuild a sense of safety and trust. One approach they may use is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a therapy designed to help you process traumatic memories.

Personality Disorders

Personality disorders like bipolar, borderline, or avoidant personality disorder affect more than 9% of the population, rooted in an inability to regulate one’s emotions and subsequent behaviors. Borderline personality disorder carries severe, debilitating symptoms, marked by unstable mood, behavioral, and self-image patterns that can result in acting impulsively and having unstable relationships.

Treatment for personality disorders often focuses on improving emotional regulation and addressing deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and relating. Your therapist can help you understand and manage these underlying dynamics through psychotherapy, primarily DBT, helping you mindfully accept the reality of your life and behaviors.

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Can Therapists Prescribe Medication?

Say you show severe signs of a personality or a depressive disorder and believe you may be a candidate for medication — and you’d like to seek out the right practitioner but wonder, “Can therapists write prescriptions?”

Of the five groups of therapists we’ve examined in this blog, a psychiatrist is the only mental health therapist legally allowed to prescribe medication. Remember, psychiatrists are also medical doctors who can write you a prescription just as your family doctor. If you’re seeing another therapist — like a psychologist or LPC — who recommends medication, you’ll need to be referred to a psychiatrist before proceeding.

How Do Therapists Diagnose Mental Health Disorders?

You’ve taken the first step and scheduled your initial appointment with a therapist, and you might be wondering about the steps they might take to officially diagnose any mental health issues you may struggle with. There’s a formal, structured path they’ll take:

Initial Assessment

To get to know you better and how therapy can help, your therapist starts the assessment process by sitting down with you to ask questions and gather information to make a proper diagnosis. They’ll ask questions and use standardized questionnaires to learn when your symptoms began, their severity, and how they’ve affected your life. In an exploratory, detailed discussion, you can start to tell your story and talk about your emotional state, your family history, and if you’ve ever been in therapy before.

It’s a chance to start building a rapport with your therapist and make sure that you “click” and feel heard and understood — and so your therapist can get a thorough understanding of your mental health issues.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM, is the standard guidebook classifying every known mental health disorder, a staple in the in the psychiatric clinical community since before World War II.

Today, clinicians refer to the 5th and current edition of the DSM as an accurate diagnostic roadmap. Your therapist will compare your symptoms with what’s listed in DSM — for instance, anxiety symptoms against the DSM’s entry for generalized anxiety disorder — to make sure they’re consistent and in alignment with a specific diagnosis.

Individualized Treatment Plan for Mental Health

Once your therapist has made a diagnosis, it’s time for treatment to begin. Since everyone experiences mental health disorders and their symptoms in individual, unique ways, the next phase involves crafting a personalized treatment plan tailored to your goals and needs.

Your plan might outline what your therapist feels is most appropriate for treatment. It might be a mix of CBT, DBT and holistic therapy, or just one to start before considering other forms of treatment depending on how you respond to talk therapy. It’s a collaborative effort where you’ll establish clear, achievable goals together, determine session frequency and measure your progress.

Psychiatric Medication Management

Medication can play an important role in managing symptoms of more severe mental health disorders. If you’re not seeing a psychiatrist, your therapist will refer you to one if they feel your mental health issues necessitate medication as a supplement to regular psychotherapy. A psychiatrist will select the appropriate medications based on your diagnosis (and reports from your therapist), starting with initial dosages and monitoring for effectiveness and potential side effects.

Find Professional Treatment for Mental Health Disorders

More than 59 million adults live with mental illness, and in 2022, 30 million — more than half — received mental health treatment, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. These are promising numbers that speak to the effectiveness of receiving a proper diagnosis and working with a qualified, licensed therapist committed to your success in recovery.

Finding a therapist and getting the help you or a loved one need is as easy as picking up the phone. Consider what treatment at one of our facilities can offer you — comprehensive, compassionate care in a safe space.

Through therapy, the picture of your future, once clouded by depression, anxiety or other symptoms, now becomes clearer and clearer as you work alongside your therapist to reconcile your mental health issues and move forward. But the change must begin with you. Contact us today; we’re happy to answer your questions about mental health treatment and facilitate your next steps.

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