Last month, we had the opportunity to unpack some common misconceptions around health coaching and therapy from the unique perspective of a health and care professional who serves as a health coach and therapist. What this initial conversation demonstrated was that there’s so much more here to unpack around the distinctions between these two critical professions—and more importantly, how they intersect to support individuals when they’re needed most.
This past week we had the chance to further this dialogue alongside Dr. Jan Smith, Chartered Psychologist practicing in the United Kingdom. Dr. Smith was trained as a health psychologist and therapist with a focus on behavior change at the individual and team-wide level. Together with Jan, we applied a different lens to our ongoing dialogue—with the added nuance of global differences to the ways we approach care—to continue exploring where the boundaries lie between health coaching and therapy. In today’s blog, we’re excited to highlight some of these key findings.
What are some key differences between therapy and health coaching?
As we learned in last month’s blog, health coaching and therapy have fairly similar approaches, but with important distinctions. According to Dr. Smith, “I see probably two differences—the focus and scope come to mind. Therapy is often provided by mental health professionals like psychologists and therapists and their role is to address mental health concerns, emotional issues, past trauma, etc. That involves a much deeper exploration of those more underlying issues where we would draw on a range of modalities to promote healing and growth.”
Although health coaching has important mental health implications, health coaches often focus on actionable behavior modifications that then impact physical, emotional and mental health, overall. Says Dr. Smith, “Health coaching is focused on behavior modification and linked to physical health and wellbeing—though mental and physical health are very much related. Their focus might be things that might contribute to mental health like sleep, stress monitoring, but also things like chronic disease management.”
How are these differences accentuated between the U.S. and U.K.?
The U.S. and U.K. operate very differently when it comes to health and care overall, and health coaching is no exception. Dr. Smith shares, “In both countries, health coaching and therapy are delivered by trained professionals (though they might be trained in different ways). As far as I understand it, the regulation standards for health coaching differ. In the U.S., health coaching seems to be practiced by individuals with a variety of backgrounds—from nurses to personal trainers. In the U.K., health coaching is a bit more central to health care settings.” In regards to what’s in common for both, “For both the U.S. and U.K., there are professional certifications and programs that people pursue on their path to the career.”
Can clients work with both a health coach and a therapist? When?
We’ve said this time and again, but at YourCoach we see both health coaches and therapists as serving irreplaceable and complementary roles. Dr. Smith recalled a recent instance where she worked with a client who found success with a health coach simultaneously, “Following a traumatic birth, a client had needed some surgery; however, as part of her managing that traumatic birth she used food as a maladaptive coping strategy. While I was able to support and manage the psychological aspects, there were a lot of behavioral changes that a health coach was really able to support in a way that I wasn’t. This is because our focus was to understand why that maladaptive coping strategy was there and to help, and the three of us were able to work well together because the behavior changes we worked on during therapy could translate to what went on outside of therapy.”
Jan reinforced, “In the broader context, health coaches and therapists play a really unique and valuable role because they often bridge the gap between what a medical recommendation might be and the practical implementation of that for people’s day to day life and functioning. They can work very collaboratively with healthcare professionals and dietitians. They can work closely with medical professionals to support lifestyle changes that might be recommended to promote their overall health and wellbeing or even promote medical treatment going on.”
Is there ever a place where health coaching leaves off and therapy picks up?
One of the biggest challenges for those seeking additional support is determining whether you need a health coach or a therapist — and when you might need that additional support. Says Jan, “The way that I see it is behavior change is on a continuum, so part of therapy might be psychologically preparing someone for those changes and understanding the patterns for why those behaviors exist and are maintained, unpack that, unravel it, make sense of it to implement new behaviors and that’s where health coaching really can come in in supporting the implementation of new behaviors and also in the maintenance phase.”
It’s precisely this reason why we believe so deeply in the power of health coaching, because it inspires individuals to make positive changes that have a real, lasting impact in their lives (very often in complement to the great work they achieve in therapy). At YourCoach, we’re proud to make health coaching more accessible to employees across the country through our ongoing partnerships that deliver our best-in-class health coaching services as non-clinical supplemental mental health support to our Industry Partners. While health coaching serves a very distinct purpose compared to other health and care professionals, like therapists, we see the role of a health coach as both complementary to other professionals like therapists and absolutely irreplaceable on its own. After all, we all need someone to lean on.
Thanks very much to Dr. Jan Smith for her impactful insights and dedication to her patients.