Question by Axesmellsgr8: What year of their education do psychiatrist take courses like or similar to Abnormal Psychology?
I know the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist, but when a psychiatrist and his/her treatment team diagnoses a patient, they tend to use terms like “bipolar,” “dysthymia,” “delusions” etc.
All of this was taught, to a small degree in my undergraduate psychology courses, mainly “Abnormal Psychology.” Example: A person I went to school with had a liberal arts degree, but they actually took enough science classes to get into med school, good grades also…..they went to med school but it had NOTHING to do with psychiatry or psychology, then they started their residency and so on…not to knock the field of psychiatry but i have met more than 2 or 3 psychiatrist who don’t seem to be able to apply psychology as well to their clients as serious undergraduates that i knew who were psychology majors or even one student who was a double major; Sociology and Social Work, but who had a passion for studying psychology on her own. i know i am probably losing some of you at this point, but obviously i am NOT a professional anything! haha…Psychiatrists or nurses, or others in and around these fields please comment!!

Best answer:

Answer by monique
Yeah, you lost me lol

But I am going to try to answer……..remember that a Psychiatrist is not a “therapist”. The role of the Psychiatrist is to clinically assess the patient, to include reviewing medications. Visits with a psychiatrist would be in most cases the same length of time one would visit a doctor for a routine visit…….perhaps 20-25 minutes. This is not a “counseling” session or “therapy”. Therefore, a psychiatrist is not applying “psychology”, a psychiatrist is practicing medicine. Two different fields and two different important roles.

Another example, lets say there is a client who has bi-polar and they are on Lithium. The psychiatrist would be reviewing labs, to ensure the lithium is in its therapeutic ranges….they would be monitoring for the effectiveness of the medication to see if it is helping the client/patient. The psychiatrist would do an evaluation of the client during the routine visit……to include assessing the patient/client. They would look at current medications to determine whether there may be adverse reactions and such. Before prescribing, the psychiatrist takes into account other health conditions of the patient as well. Again, the psychiatrist is a medical doctor.

Psychologists uses terms as well like bipolar, delusions, and such as well…….that is what they do in regards to diagnosing from the DSM-IV-TR, the diagnostic manual of mental disorders.

Someone with an undergraduate degree would not be “diagnosing” clients.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

 

 

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