What is the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist?

The clinical psychology and the psychiatry are two disciplines applied in the field of mental health that are frequently confused. The type of problems they address and their working methods may be somewhat similar, but there are clear differences between the two.

If you want to avoid confusion of this type, this article can be useful when it comes to seeing the differences between the psychologist and the psychiatrist and distinguish both types of professional profiles.

• If you doubt about the role of mental health professionals, check out this post: "The difference between psychologist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist"

Main differences between the psychologist and the psychiatrist

Both psychiatry and psychotherapy are complex concepts and in which it is possible to find many distinctive nuances, but to summarize a lot, these are the most important differences between both of them.

1. The academic path of each discipline

Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists have very different backgrounds. The former come from

Bachelor's and university degrees in Psychology and then they specialize in clinical psychology, while psychiatrists go through the University career of Medicine and then specialize in branch of psychiatry.

Therefore, the skills and knowledge of both professionals are very different: the psychiatrist has more knowledge about the body human as an organism and its neurological functioning, while the psychologist is more trained in social and dynamic sciences cultural

2. Approaches are often different

As a consequence of the previous point, another of the differences between the psychologist and the psychiatrist is found in the focus used. The psychiatrist has a biomedical approach of human behavior and its affective states, and that is why it focuses on physiological aspects, anatomical and chemical components of the human body (especially those related to the nervous system and hormones).

For his part, the psychologist can adopt more heterogeneous postures that put more emphasis on social context, personal relationships and culture; although she can also take an approach that takes into account the patient's organism as something isolated, depending on the type of psychological current to which it is ascribed, the biological will never be the main thing in what put focus.

This is because in psychology the interaction between the subject and the environment and the interaction between the subject and others is studied more, while psychiatry adopts a somewhat more reductionist perspective (and no less correct) analyzing and intervening especially in variables that affect only the person you want to help: the functioning of their brain, a possible disease that affects certain glands of his endocrine system, etc.

3. The kind of problems they treat

Psychiatrists tend to deal with psychiatric disorders, forms of discomfort that can be considered diagnosable pathologies, while the phenomena that psychologists treat are more varied and include those approachable from psychiatry.

For example, a case of major depression constitutes a problem in which both a psychologist and a psychiatrist can intervene; However, discomfort due to low self-esteem, a relationship crisis or feeling unmotivated at work can be dealt with from psychotherapy, but hardly from psychiatry. This is because psychological intervention is not limited to the field of mental health, but can be adapted to all behavior patterns capable of providing greater well-being in general.

4. The method of intervention

Another difference between the psychologist and the psychiatrist is in their way of approaching the patient's problems. A psychiatrist almost always uses more or less invasive methodsas it focuses on modifying the functioning of specific parts of the body. That is why in many of the resources used in psychiatry there is a significant probability of suffering side effects, although part of the The job of these specialist doctors is to monitor cases to minimize risks and to modify treatment quickly when necessary. necessary.

Also, since the psychiatrist is a doctor, is legally qualified to prescribe drugs, something that does not happen in the case of psychologists, responsible for providing psychological guidance and proposing techniques based on habits, patterns of thought and processing of emotions, and behavior in general. Thus, psychotherapy does not seek to modify the dynamics of specific parts of the body, but rather the change that is sought is in the whole of the person and their usual life context.

• Know more: "Types of psychological therapy"

Summarizing...

Ultimately, both disciplines are different enough to have their own fields of application, but that does not mean that they are not complementary: they often are.

To speak of differences between the psychologist and the psychiatrist is also to recognize their own lines of training and work as relatively independent trajectories, but what is clear is that both approaches are useful when intervening in mental health.

Bibliographic references:

• Feixas, G. & Miró, M.T. (1998). Approaches to psychotherapy. An introduction to psychological treatments. Barcelona: Paidós.
• Lieberman, J. A., Ogas, O. (2015): Shrinks: The untold story of Psychiatry. New York: Back Bay Books.
• Marconi, J. (2001). Psychiatry at the turn of the century: social psychiatry. Chilean journal of neuro-psychiatry, 39 (1), 10-11.
• Sadock, B. J., Ahmad, S. and Sadock, V. TO. (2018): Kaplan & Sadock's Pocket Handbook of Clinical Psychiatry. Riverwoods (Illinois): Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.