Blog 2 – Demystifying Psychiatry -2 - What illness do psychiatrists cure?

Topic: What do psychiatrists/psychologists do? What do they treat?

At the end of blog 1 we broke a few myths around mental illness, their treatments, and diagnostic criteria. Now we might get the question you are saying mental disorders can’t be found using normal tests then how do you find them? What do you treat? To know answer to question lets know the difference between the psychologists and psychiatrist

	Psychologists	Psychiatrist
Education	Studies psychology and human behaviour	Study medicine (MBBS) and specialize in psychiatry
Focus	Focus on understanding thoughts, behaviour and emotions	Focus on treating mental disorders and provide required medications
What they do	Uses psychology assessment and psychotherapy for treatment but they cannot able to prescribe medication in most countries	Can diagnose, prescribe medications since they are medical doctors they can also provide psychotherapy but based on their training on that
What they treat	They treat anxiety, depression, stress, relationship issues, trauma and behavioural concerns using empirical based therapies	They diagnose and treat a wide range of mental disorders like schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder, severe depression, Obsessive compulsion disorder (OCD) which will require medication along with psychotherapy

 

Myth Buster Section:

Myth: Psychologists and Psychiatrist are competitors
Buster: Actually, they are not competitors, they are companions. In most hospital settings both psychologists and psychiatrists work together. For an example person with severe depression or personality disorder need medicine provided by psychiatrist and psychotherapies like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which will be provided by trained psychologists

Myth: Psychiatrist can only prescribe medicine
Buster: Many psychiatrists are well trained psychotherapies but since they might be busy in hospital settings and as we discussed before psychotherapies are not sometimes finished with one or two sessions even a brief session takes at least 8-14 weeks. This is where psychologists come to scene

Myth: Psychologists cannot diagnose mental disorders
Buster: Many clinical psychologists are trained to diagnose and mental disorders using standardized test and interviews they work alongside with psychiatrists to create a comprehensive treatment plan

So now we come to question, what do they treat?

In the previous blog we saw that the human mind is the collection of Cognition, Emotion and Motivation when any one of those affected, we have a mental disorder. Most people think mental illness doesn't show any symptoms but it is false. For an example consider any physical illness like diabetes affected may show symptoms like frequent urination, weight loss, time taken to heal will be more. That applies to mental illness too. People affected may have sleep disturbance, loss of appetite or binge eating, social withdrawal, emotional withhold. In some cases, a person with mental illness may show physical symptoms like heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, fatigue. In the psychiatry field there is a difference between symptoms and signs. Both psychologists and psychiatrists look for these both and treat them accordingly. Symptoms are patients explaining what is happening? What are they feeling? Like their experiences and reports, such as sadness, anxiety, or hearing voices and signs are what psychologists or psychiatrists observe them during the process through a mental state examination, observing how they answer, how they behave? Like reduced eye contact, slowed speech, agitation or disorganized behaviour. Based on these both psychologists and psychiatrists plan the treatment plan and execute it. After this you can ask questions about physical illness. We all know there are various types of illness but what are the types of mental illness?

1.       Obsessive Compulsion Disorder (OCD):
Many people misunderstood the term obsessive as excessive desire to do but in French slang OCD is commonly known as doubting disease. According to psychologists and psychiatrists obsession is persistent thoughts, ideas or impulse that is experienced as unwanted and anxiety provoking. People affected treat these ideas as inappropriate and want to dimmish it but when it starts to affect their social cycle this becomes a mental disorder. Most obsession will be followed by the compulsion, which is ritual or steps to dimmish the obsession. It can be easily understood by an example.

Example:

Person X has a fear of theft, he locks his home with an advanced locking system but he constantly checks it even while going to work he stops in the middle and returns to home and checks whether the home is locked. Here he had an obsession with home safety and constantly checking it on its compulsion which affects his social cycle like delay to work, fuel wastage, loss of concentration. The person recognizes that the repeated checking is excessive, yet feels unable to stop because it temporarily reduces anxiety.

 

2.       Mood disorder:

A massive set of people are approaching Psychiatric hospitals because of a mood disorder. The term “depression” is often used casually on social media. While feeling sad or stressed is a normal part of life, clinical depression is a diagnosable mental disorder that requires careful assessment. There is an ocean of difference between stress, sadness and depression.

Stress	Sadness	Depression
Caused by a specific challenge or pressure	Triggered by a loss or disappointment	A mental disorder that affects mood, thoughts and daily functioning
Often improves when the stressor (the event which causes stress) is resolved	Gradually heals with time and support	Persists for at least two weeks and often requires professional evaluation
May cause worry, irritability or tension	Feeling low, crying or missing someone loves more	Persistent low mood, loss of interest, hopelessness, fatigue, sleep and appetite changes
Doesn’t not always interfere significantly with daily life	Daily functioning is usually maintained	Can seriously affect, work relationship, self-care and quality of life

 

So better terming all as depression understand the cause of problem, unless the trained psychologists or psychiatrist you can’t be diagnose yourself as you have depression

End of blog

Thank you for reading. In the next blog, we will explore an important question: what other mental illness does psychiatrist treat?  We will also discuss more myths surrounding mental health

References:

 Zorumksi, C.F., & Rubin, E.H. Demystifying psychiatry.