I have thought for a while now that clinical psychologists are the best of the bunch. They are surely better than the MSW’s or LCSW’s. The latter types can be pretty good, but they’re just not as good as the PhD’s, let’s face it. An exceptional few MSW’s and LCSW’s are very good, but they often work for an institution or organization in some way as opposed to being in private practice.
The process to become a licensed clinical psychologist is incredibly rigorous. I have met quite a few of them in my life, and I haven’t met a dumb or lousy one yet.
I also think that Clinical Psychologists may indeed understand human psychology better than even psychiatrists. My feeling that was that the PhD’s had a deeper understanding of the actual mechanisms of the human psyche (in a Jungian sense). Psychiatrists’ education focused a lot more on medicine and the body as opposed to the psyche.
Psychiatrists nowadays seem to be mostly drug pushers. However, some of the psychiatrists that my clients have had were incredibly good.
In general, most licensed mental health workers are pretty damn good. Let’s just say that I haven’t met a bad one yet. But some of them are just wrong, and if you are have been given a wrong diagnosis, which happens all the time (I see misdiagnosed clients all the time), just fire your clinician, and go get a new one.