Psychotherapy, or personal counselling with a psychotherapist, is an intentional interpersonal relationship used by trained psychotherapists to aid a client or patient in problems of living.

It aims to increase the individual's sense of their own well-being. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family).

Psychotherapy may also be performed by practitioners with a number of different qualifications, including psychiatry, clinical psychology, counseling psychology, mental health counseling, clinical or psychiatric social work, marriage and family therapy, rehabilitation counseling, music therapy, occupational therapy, psychiatric nursing, psychoanalysis and others.

However, some European countries have passed laws about psychotherapy that restrict its practice to the professions of psychology and psychiatry; Austria has a law that recognizes multi-disciplinary approaches; Italy is the only country that has preferred a limiting "medical approach" to psychotherapy; other European countries have preferred different approaches to psychotherapy such as self-regulation. In the United Kingdom the National Council of Psychotherapists was established in 1971 following the Foster Report on the registration of psychotherapists. Other professional bodies do merge psychotherapists from different backgrounds such as the BACP, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy that represents both counsellors and psychotherapists that was founded in 1977 and the UKCP, United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy established later in 1993 as a development of the United Kingdom Standing Conference for Psychotherapy launced in 1985.

Over the last decade the British labour governments have tried to state regulate and control the profession through the Health Professions Council - an independent regulator for health professionals in the UK. Such a proposal has caused a lot of disappointment and most professionals and professional bodies have protested against the proposed legislation. Many points have been pointed out against the regulation through the HPC and many reports have been issued. One of them commissioned by the National Council of Psychotherapists has emphasized the risks of the unlikely approval of the proposed legislation which is considered to be partly against EU law and human rights in many of its parts (Amicarelli's Report - Is HPC legal?). Dr Amicarelli respectfully suggested the British government to take a few steps back (page 72) also highlighting that the HPC, Health Professions Council should be closed down immediately (page 64). It seems the new government have accepted such suggestions elaborated by Dr Amicarelli; in fact a new initiative to discuss the HPC abolition has been launched by the Coalition Government very recently (Abolish The HPC).