Who does what

Figures checked September 2026

When you start looking for help, you run into the same handful of job titles:

GP
Psychologist
Psychiatrist
Counsellor or psychotherapist
Mental health social worker
Mental health occupational therapist

Their training overlaps, the titles don’t all mean what they sound like, and the rules about who Medicare Australia's public health insurance scheme. For mental health, it gives rebates on sessions with psychologists and some other professionals, usually through a Mental Health Treatment Plan. More in the jargon decoder pays for differ between them. Working out the differences is worth ten minutes, because starting again with the wrong person can cost you months.

Your GP

For most people this is where it starts, and your GP does more than write the Referral A letter from a GP, psychiatrist or paediatrician that you need for the Medicare rebate. You can see a psychologist without one if you pay the full fee. More in the jargon decoder .

GPs see mental health arriving as a physical complaint more often than anything else: exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix, gut trouble, chest tightness, headaches, a body that won’t settle. Ruling out a physical cause is part of the work.

A GP can write a Mental Health Treatment Plan, prescribe medication, and refer you on. Some are trained to deliver a small number of structured therapy sessions themselves.

Psychologist

A psychologist is trained to assess mental health problems and to treat them with therapy. That takes six years of study and supervised practice at minimum, and they’re registered with the national regulator. They can’t prescribe medication.

General and clinical are both psychologists. A clinical psychologist has an extra endorsement on top, which usually means two more years of training aimed at more complex problems. Medicare pays a higher Rebate The amount Medicare pays back towards a session. It comes back to you after you've paid, so what you pay yourself is the fee minus the rebate. More in the jargon decoder for a clinical psychologist: $149.05 a session against $101.55.

Which one suits you depends on what you’re dealing with, and on who is actually available. There are more general psychologists than clinical psychologists, so the wait is often shorter. Clinical psychologists also tend to charge more, so the larger rebate can leave you out of pocket by much the same amount.

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who has specialised in mental health. They can diagnose, prescribe and do therapy, though many spend most of their time on medication and diagnosis rather than on weekly sessions.

Their Medicare rebates come from a different part of the system, and aren’t capped at ten the way the plan is. The practical barriers are cost and waiting — a first appointment can be months away.

Counsellor and psychotherapist

These two titles cause more confusion than all the others put together.

The training floor is lower here. Joining a professional association as a counsellor or psychotherapist takes less study and less supervised practice than registering as a psychologist does.

Plenty of practitioners go well beyond that floor. Many hold master’s degrees, years of supervised practice, and training in approaches most psychologists don’t do. Person-centred and Narrative therapy A therapy built on one principle: you are not the problem, the problem is the problem. It works on the story you tell about your life, including what that story leaves out. More in the jargon decoder are mostly practised by counsellors and psychotherapists rather than by psychologists.

And neither title is protected in Australia. These professions regulate themselves. The associations set the standards, and joining is voluntary. Legally, someone with no training at all can call themselves a counsellor, a psychotherapist or a therapist.

So the title on its own tells you nothing, and what someone is registered with tells you a lot. The two national associations are the Australian Counselling Association and the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia. Both set training and supervision standards, and both take complaints.

Medicare doesn’t cover counsellors or psychotherapists, whatever their training.

A mental health social worker is accredited by the Australian Association of Social Workers, with an extra mental health accreditation on top. They’re trained in therapy, and in the practical things around it: housing, money, family services, and the systems people get stuck in.

Covered by Medicare under a treatment plan. Social work sits outside the national health regulator, so it’s the association’s accreditation you check.

Mental health occupational therapist

An occupational therapist with a mental health endorsement. Their focus is on function and daily life — getting back to work, study, routine, the things that stopped — alongside the therapy itself.

Registered with the national regulator, and covered by Medicare under a treatment plan.

Which titles are protected

Some of these words are legally restricted and some aren’t, and the difference matters when you’re choosing someone from a search result.

Restricted. Psychologist, psychiatrist and occupational therapist. Using one of these titles without registration is an offence, and all three appear on a public register you can search.

Not restricted. Counsellor, psychotherapist, therapist. Also “psychoanalyst”, “life coach” and every variation on those.

Plenty of excellent practitioners are counsellors, so this isn’t a reason to avoid them. It’s a reason to spend two minutes looking up what someone trained in and who holds them to account. How to find a therapist covers where to look.

What Medicare pays for

A treatment plan gives you a Medicare rebate on up to ten sessions a calendar year with a psychologist, a mental health social worker or a mental health occupational therapist. Psychiatrists sit under separate arrangements. GPs can claim for writing the plan and for the review.

Counsellors and psychotherapists sit outside the scheme. That’s why so much free and low-cost counselling is delivered by them, and free and low-cost options has the list.

Where next

Once you’ve checked that someone is properly qualified, the profession matters less than people expect. Why who you see matters more than what they do explains why the fit between you and the person matters more than their qualifications.

If you’re still working out what therapy involves at all, what therapy actually is covers the basics.