What is the difference between psychiatry and psychology?

Psychology deals with human perception, cognition, behavior etc. Psychiatry on the other hand is a medical branch deals with mental disorder, diagnosis, prevention and medicines.

Psychologists are in general not licensed to prescribe psychiatric drugs to patients. They depend on various types of talk therapy and behavior therapy. It may be psycho-analysis or CBT (Cognitive behavior therapy). They are mainly trained to test and treat for various cognitive habits. For example a CBT therapist knows that there are four factors which depend on each other to produce mental states.

1) Thought 2) Behavior 3) Physical symptoms 4) Emotion (sometimes the 3rd factor is omitted then it is a trianle)

Psychiatrists on the other hand are trained doctors who can prescribe medications. Their approach is based on the fact that imbalances in certain neurotransmitters are responsible for our distorted mental perceptions. They are mainly concerned about brain chemistry.

In case of most mental illness, specially neurosis, it is believed that both type of therapy compliments each other.



For example, depression is a mental illness. It is widely believed that to get rid of depression the best possible line of attack would be to take both approaches. The most popular theory of depression asserts that it is due to the imbalances of certain neurotransmitters like dopamin, serotonin etc. So a psychiatrist will try to correct the imbalance by prescribing antidepressants like SSRI (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).

A psychologist on the other hand would work on the patients self esteem, self worth and would try to enforce an insight in the mind of the patient so that the patient can view of the world more clearly and understand that most of his/her perceptions are distorted. The therapist would often give certain exercises to the patients like writing an anxiety or depression diary etc. so that the patient can focus on his/her thinking pattern.



So you see psychiatry is more about medicine, nerves, brain, neurotransmitters etc. whereas psychology is more about how you think, feel, behave etc.

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