Are psychiatric nurse practitioners common? They conduct therapy and prescribe medications both.
The ability to pass organic chemistry.
I know you are likely being facetious, but I’d resent that sentiment otherwise. My best psychologist got straight As his entire life. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did pass organic chemistry. But I do know that getting his medical degree would have taken him four more years, and there is a shortage of psychologists in my area.
If only stupid Medicaid hadn’t stopped paying for it (they want a psychiatrist on staff.) I’d still be going there. Finding good psych doctors around here is a losing battle. (My GP is the best “psychiatrist” around here, but that’s another story.)
Psychology is a discipline, with numerous professions within it - 56 in the APA according to wiki.
Its more an area of enquiry than a job description by itself, without further explanation it really doesnt tell you much about the job they do.
From an applied perspective, talk therapy is only one aspect, and a more common activity that often distinguishes them from other therapy focussed professions like social workers would be doing psychological testing, ie IQ tests, personality tests, providing psychological reports or the like. This again will vary somewhat by country or state.
Psychology does have the unfortunate issue of often being done via arts degrees even though it has a strong science component, in Australia at least. I wouldnt say its so much they couldnt pass organic chemistry as they have a tendency to think thats all not touchy feely enough. But the process is long enough the worst offenders do tend to wash out.
A psychiatrist is most commonly a medical doctor who further specialises in psychiatry with the exceptions noted above.
Otara
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A psychiatrist treats mental disease, diagnoses schizophrenia, prescribes medication - deals with dire mental illness. A psychologist, I think, does the talk therapy, shepherds people through phobias, in other word spends a lot more time dealing with more…minor stuff. Is this correct? in other words, if you are standing on a street corner screaming aliens are following you, you go to a psychiatrist. If you can’t understand why you keep picking the same ill-fitting romantic partners, you go to a psychologist?
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When a psychologist gets his or her degree, they have to pick an area of expertise, is this correct? Do all psychologists do therapy with patients as part of it, meaning is this a requirement? They decide talking with people afraid of flying isn’t for them, so they go on to do experiments and research?
Is there still resentment between psychiatrists and psychologists? Do they work together, the psychologist referring a patient for medication? Do they discuss patients together?
In the US I think this is correct, in Australia it is still possible to just be a ‘psychologist’ although not for much longer I suspect. Psychologists do not only do talking therapy - there are experimental psychologists for instance who could never do therapy with clients for their entire career. Im pretty sure most would work with clients as part of their training at some point, but the focus might be more on interviewing skills or assessment rather than therapy.
In Australia there tends to be more friction between social workers and psychologists in my experience. Psychiatrists refer quite frequently to psychologists (and vice versae although possibly less often as usually its done via a GP) and there is patient discussion when appropriate.
Otara
Wow, appreciate the responses!
Since somebody asked, the US State in question is Texas.
heh. In a similar vein, I’ve found that the practical difference is that a psychiatrist will get really irate if you call him a “psychologist”.
I know you’re posting tongue-in-cheek, but is there some truth to this? That is, do psychiatrists tend to have some unusual sort of weirdness to them?
Lots of good answers here. I am a psychologist who has been both an academic type and a clinical psychologist. Most are one or the other, and as pointed out above, there are lots of different academic/research psychologists. I was a social psychologist, so I taught classes on group behavior, decision-making, and gender roles. My research was on decision-making. I then retrained to be a clinical psychologist, since that is a whole different field, sort of like switching from American History to European History.
Psychiatrists, on the other hand, tend to all be clinicians (with the exception of a small subset of ones who do only research). Therefore it makes sense to say “clinical psychologist” (as opposed to social psychologist or school psychologist) but not clinical psychiatrist. They tend to see the range of folks who suffer from anything from mild depression to severe, chronic mental illness, but they see them for one thing only: to prescribe medications. I know there are a few who do therapy, but they are few and far between. Plus, very little of their training is about therapy. A psychiatric residency is 2 years, and they have a lot of meds to learn in that time. A doctoral level clinical psychologist, on the other hand, spends 5 years in graduate school, and at least 3 of those learning to do therapy, including a year of full-time internship.
To be a psychologist, you have to have a PhD. The same is not true for a psychiatrist. *
*Ok, in some states, you can have only a Master’s, but I am really tired of being described as a non-MD, when they are non-PhDs, but no one says that.
Finally, the terms “counselor” and “therapist” are not legally restricted, but psychologist is. That means anyone can call themselves a therapist or counselor, which can be scary.
in my experience there is not much difference at all. I have been to both and both here in New Zealand are allowed to prescribe medicine. The same can also be said for both when it comes to the medicine that is given. It can take a long time to find the right dose of the right medication to do the job and both are able to help guide you (if they are doing their job right) to what help is out there for you. There might be differences in qualifications but I can’t see the difference in the kind of service that is given. I would have been very lost of i did not have the help of either of them. Mental illness is no fun and you have to take and stay with whatever avenue you feel most comfortable with. So really if there is a difference on paper or whatever does it really matter?, as long as you are moving forward instead of backwards.
This thread will probably show up there pretty soon.
Psychiatrists say, “Ah ha”
While a psychologist would say “Hmmm”
Just a stereotype in the medical community, similar to how surgeons are jocks, Internal Med docs tend to be nerdier, and Emergency room Docs are adrenaline junkies. And pediatricians are innately childish people.
Psychiatrists tend to get the “weird kid” stereotype. Same stereotype probably applies a bit to Pathologists, but they tend to get a bit more respect than the psychiatrists.
The big thing tends to be is that the medical field tends to be filled with Type A personalities (just due to the grind of medical school and the requirements for it- Type A’s tend to thrive in that sort of an environment), however, so much of psychiatry is filled with “wait and see” or “trial and error” sort of things- there aren’t really definite tests to identify diseases easily, there’s no set cure that’ll work 100% off the time, and a lot of it requires a heavier emphasis on the subjective vs. the objective- ie: is the patient reporting having improved functioning/doing better in life from the treatment vs. much of the rest of medicine.
That can be frustrating for a lot of Type A people- to not really have sure-fire definite answers for things, and it is one time where psychiatrists tend to get the short end of the stick sometimes (in my experiences) in respect from others- hence the “weird” sort of stereotypes.
It’s much more reassuring to just look at CBC labs and track a patient’s calcium levels, or to take an X-ray and see the broken bone in the hand; or to cut into a sick patient, remove the appendix or such, and watch them get better. It’s another thing to have monthly meetings with your depressed patient and try drug after drug of SSRI’s, TCAs, SNRI’s and everything else in combination with therapies and working together with them without really having any definite labs that’ll tell you the patient is getting better- just the pt’s feelings, experiences, and discussions with you.
It’s just another aspect of medicine, and some people are more suiting towards the field, while others tend to hate that sort of thing and shy away from it.
It happens. That said- I’ve certainly come across weird and odd doctors in all fields from psychiatry to surgery to internal medicine and ER docs. People are people, and they run the gamut. But certain old stereotypes are playful and hard to kill, so they tend to perpetuate.