European Association for Psychotherapy explained

The European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP) is a Vienna-based umbrella organisation for 128 psychotherapist organizations (including 28 national associations and 17 European associations) from 42 countries with a membership of more than 120,000 psychotherapists.^[1] Individual members may also join the organisation directly rather than through one of its member organisations.

The EAP has sponsored much of the European effort from the mid-1990s toward the professionalisation of psychotherapy and the formation of pan-European training standards, ethics and guidelines.^[2]

A submission to the European Commission to establish the Common Training Framework for the Profession of Psychotherapist is currently in process (2021).

The President of EAP is Irena Bezić (Croatia);^[3] the general secretary of the EAP is Prof. Eugenijus Laurinaitis (Lithuania).^[4]

The association is based on the Strasbourg Declaration on Psychotherapy of 1990 whereby the EAP promotes the need for high standards of training on a scientific basis, and fights for free and independent exercise of psychotherapy in Europe.^[5] Important activities include:

• Creating a collaborative democratic forum for all European national and method-based professional associations in psychotherapy.
• Establishing pan-European professional post-graduate training standards consisting of a minimum of 2,400 hours, over a minimum of four years, of specialist training, with a significant component of supervised practice.
• Awarding the European Certificate of Psychotherapy (ECP):^[6] The aim of the European Certificate of Psychotherapy is to implement a comparable standard of training and mutual recognition of training across Europe.
• Building the Register for ECP Psychotherapists: creating a searchable database of the availability of over 5,000 psychotherapists in Europe.
• Promoting EAP Ethical Guidelines: The EAP has developed ethical guidelines to protect patients and is establishing these across Europe.^[7]
• EAP is also a founding member of the World Council for Psychotherapy (WCP).

Publication

Publication of the International Journal of Psychotherapy, a professional journal with 3 issues per annum.^[8]

External links

• EAP Home page

Notes and References

1. Web site: About. 2021-03-23. European Association for Psychotherapy. en-US.
2. Young, C. (2011) The history and development of Body Psychotherapy: European collaboration, Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy: An International Journal for Theory, Research and Practice, 6:1, DOI: 10.1080/17432979.2010.545189 p. 57.
3. Web site: About. 2021-03-23. European Association for Psychotherapy. en-US.
4. Web site: EAP: Executive Board. EAP. www.europsyche.org. 2017-09-29. https://web.archive.org/web/20170929183540/http://www.europsyche.org/executive_board. 2017-09-29. dead.
5. Web site: Strasbourg Declaration on Psychotherapy - EAP. 2021-03-23. European Association for Psychotherapy. en-US.
6. Web site: European Certificate of Psychotherapy (ECP) - EAP. 2021-03-23. European Association for Psychotherapy. en-US.
7. Web site: EAP Quality Standards. 2021-03-23. European Association for Psychotherapy. en-US.
8. Web site: International Journal of Psychotherapy. International Journal of Psychotherapy website.