eli5: What do psychiatrists do? They help you with mental issues but how? Are there any strategies, guidelines?
In: Biology
A psychiatrist is a doctor, they are trained as doctors and then specialized in treating and diagnosing psychiatric disorders, things like depresion, bipolar disorder, psychosis, schizophrenia etc… They know how to do mental therapy and pharmacological therapy, so they know what drugs each patient needs, how to control them properly etc… And diagnosis is one of the parts of their job and its incredibly important…
For example, a person with bypolar disorder is almost surely going to need to do treatment with lithium and mental therapy, he could get the mental therapy from somewhere else, but for the treatment with lithium, he needs a doctor to control it and make sure he is getting the exact dose he needs, which is a very complicated process… and if he were to get into a crisis, it would be a psychiatrist the ideal person to treat it… Long story short, they are the person specialised in dealing with psychiatric conditions, from things like depression to things like phobias, PTSD or schizophrenia…
They study things like th DSM-V, guides on diagnosis, on treatments and therapies and many more things
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