How Does a Psychiatrist Help People?
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Psychiatry's History
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Psychiatry is the practice of treating mental disorders through physiological help, psychological help or a combination of both. Psychiatric practices can date back as far as 5000 BC when Greek society began to record descriptions of mental disorders. In those times it was largely believed that psychotic traits and acts were a result of supernatural powers until the 4th century BC when Hippocrates expressed that they were rooted in mental disorder. Psychiatric hospitals that relied on clinical observations of mental illness began to appear in the Middle East between 700 and 800 A.D. The practicing doctors in this era were among the first to legitimately link the social aspects of human beings to biological functions.
Psychiatric Disciplines And Neurology
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Through advancement of technology and society's shifting views, modern psychiatry developed into a practice that divides treatment into three categories: mental illness, learning disabilities and personality disorders. Within these three categories the style and tools of treatment can vary from neurological examination, prescription medication and/or talk therapy. Neurological examinations have been known to show where brain damage or brain wave patterns indicate certain mental illnesses. For instance, it is said that male patients who suffer from schizophrenia shows damage in the parietal cortex, the part of the brain that translates our sensory experiences. Damage to the audio translator in the brain can cause a schizophrenic to "hear voices" that do not exist.
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Pyschiatrists Help Through Medicine
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Prescribing medications are also a part of how psychiatrists help people. Psychopharmacology is the study of medications and their effects on people with mental disorders. Psychiatrists rely on this study to determine which medications they should prescribe to someone with concern to their disorder, background and physiological makeup. Some personality disorders such as attention deficit disorder can be treated via medications that control impulsive behavior or stimulate subjects to focus on one activity at a time. However, many medications also have side effects that can be just as hard to handle as the personality disorder itself, making psychiatric prescriptions an even more daunting task.
Psychiatrists Help With Talk Therapy
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Talk therapy from psychiatrists also helps people by assisting them in properly defining exactly what the mental disorder is. There are many listed throughout the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4, or DSM-IV, but some are very subtle in which symptoms can be attributed to which illnesses. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is divided into 3 different categories depending on when the symptoms started and how long they have lasted. Through strong communication with the patient, a psychiatrist can determine which type of PTSD the patient has and gauging their physiological information (i.e. a history of allergies to certain medications, family genes, etc.) to prescribe the right medication as opposed to lumping all PTSD people into one category with one medication.
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