What’s the difference between a mentalist and a magician?

Definitions

Magic uses sleight of hand, misdirection, and/or gimmicked objects to create an illusion.

Mental magic is a subcategory of magic. It uses sleight of hand, misdirection, and/or gimmicked physical objects to create the illusion of demonstrating extraordinary mental abilities. (Examples of extraordinary mental abilities include telepathy, influencing thoughts, having a tremendous memory, predicting the future, moving objects with the mind and remote viewing.) 

Mentalism uses something other than sleight of hand, misdirection, and/or gimmicked physical objects to portray demonstrations of extraordinary mental abilities. Mentalism may or may not include mental magic as part of the method.

Examples

Visual Magic:  A magician uses a gimmicked physical object to create the illusion that a physical object disappears.

Mental Magic:  A magician uses a gimmicked physical object to secretly discover information about a person, then reveal it.

Mentalism:  A mentalist uses a gimmicked physical object to secretly discover information about a person. Then the mentalist uses cold reading to reveal more information that was not obtained by a magic trick. The cold reading is combined with the magic trick to increase the appearance of mind reading. 

Side note:  If you're looking to hire a magician or mentalist, you should check out the video on the website of Jesse Dameron, Philadelphia Magician & Mentalist. 

More Information

• A mentalist does not necessarily use any sleight of hand, misdirection, and/or gimmicked physical objects. A mentalist can use purely mental concepts. For example, a mentalist may use memory techniques called "mnemonics" to memorize extraordinary amounts of information. Mnemonics do not use any sleight of hand, misdirection, or gimmicked physical objects. A mentalist may also entertain people purely through a genuine ability to guess information.
• Mental magic is not automatically better or worse than visual magic. If a mental magic trick is to predict the outcome of a single coin flip, it may be underwhelming when compared with a strong visual illusion. A weak visual illusion may be underwhelming when compared to a strong mental magic trick.
• Mentalism is not automatically better or worse than magic. A good visual magic show will blow away a bad mentalism presentation. A good mentalism presentation will blow away a bad visual magic show.
• Mentalism, mental magic, and visual magic are not exclusive to each other. It is possible to have a show with mentalism, mental magic, and visual magic. It is also possible to have an entertainment show with many other types of entertainment too, such as musical entertainment.