Where to refer patients in the field of psychotherapy?

The referral of patients is a very present reality in the field of health services. psychotherapeutic assistance; it happens with relative frequency that, for one reason or another, it is necessary to interrupt the therapy in the place where the patient is attending and recommend that they attend another place, facilitating that transition as much as possible.

This should not be seen as a failure; the fact of having to refer a patient to another team of mental health experts is knowing adapt to a reality in which not all places are suitable to help any type of person. Above all, taking into account that part of psychotherapy consists of discovering things about the root of the emotional or behavioral problem of those who need professional help.

But… Where to refer patients in the field of psychotherapy? In the following lines we will address this issue based on the fact that when referring a patient, it is necessary to take priority the welfare of this person, although this is not incompatible with the search for formulas to simplify this process.

Cases in which a psychotherapy patient should be referred

These are the most common situations in which the referral of a person who attends psychotherapy is necessary:

• He hasn't gotten better for a long time as he should: psychotherapy shouldn't become “chronic”.
• The professional does not have the appropriate qualifications: this fact can be revealed as more is known about the problem the patient is suffering from.
• There is a conflict of interest: for example, the patient and the therapist have met in a non-professional context.
• The patient asks for it: it must not be forgotten that the subjectivity of the patient and his decision-making capacity must be respected in such personal matters.

How to choose where to refer psychological therapy patients

These are the main criteria and guidelines that should be taken into account when referring patients in the context of psychotherapeutic care:

1. Select only duly accredited centers

Given that in the Spanish context the practice of Psychology in the clinical and health field is regulated to guarantee quality standards, it is necessary that the professional who refers to a patient avoid the transition to a center that does not offer these guarantees. In this sense, it is important to be actively involved in knowing if the place you are considering to refer the patient has duly trained professionals with a university degree in Psychology/Medicine and the corresponding specializations in care psychotherapeutics; even if the patient is not aware that these quality criteria exist.

2. Process automation is key

The preferable thing in all cases is to have the system for referring patients to other mental health care centers as automated as possible. In this sense, networks of psychological and psychiatric assistance centers such as Mentalia are a great help, given that by having a wide diversity of specializations and locations, the chances are maximized that the person who needs help can be seen in a matter of days, even if you have been going to online therapy sessions and live in another city.

3. Make sure there are no language barriers

In the event that the therapy has been carried out in the online modality, or if the place where the psychotherapist is based has several languages, it must be ensured that the difference in languages ​​will not be an impediment to the transmission of information between a center and the following. Ultimately, any patient referral process must be accompanied by a diagnostic report or a document with the therapist's observations what derives

4. Do not rely solely on known therapists

It is true that knowing another psychotherapist personally can make things easier in some cases; however, today limiting oneself to this type of informal contact is too limiting, and there is a risk of falling into what is known as Illusive Thought, in which the person deceives himself by forcing reality to fit into what suits him for comfort (in this case, maintaining an optimistic bias about the ability of that other psychologist to adequately treat the person who is being derived).

Mentalia Salud: the network of reference mental health centers

Mental Health is an organization that bases its work on psychotherapeutic and psychiatric intervention services through a wide network of Centers for Mental Health, Residential Centers, Psychiatric Hospitals, Psychosocial Rehabilitation Centers and supervised housing distributed throughout the Spain.

As such, it has professionals in all areas of care for patients with psychopathologies, using a comprehensive care model; and also for this reason, it is an option that offers simplicity and full guarantees in the process of referring patients, since it offers the certainty that in its network of specialists there will always be professionals capable of offering an intervention tailored to what the person needs.