Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Why Do You See A Psychiatrist?

People see shrinks for a variety of reasons. These days, I think people come mostly for treatment of psychiatric disorders--also called mental illnesses-- like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia. But people come for other reasons. Sometimes they have personality styles that aren't working for them, or they have behaviors that they troublesome, like drinking too much or using drugs or gambling. Some people want to understand themselves better and use therapy for this purpose. Others need help coping with major losses or stresses.
Most of these issues do fall under the categories of psychiatric disorders--- so someone with a maladaptive personality disorder or a behavioral problem will fit into a diagnostic category, but with respect to the types of treatments offer, there aren't medicines for all of these, and in some cases, therapy gets a bigger role. So if you've seen a psychiatrist, I'll ask why.
I'll have more questions later. Thank you for participating.


3 comments:

Dinah said...

Thank you to the one voter who wants to relate better to the Shrink Rappers.

Anonymous said...

of course, the initial reason tended to expand... what I thought was maybe a little problem with depression turned out to be related to all sorts of things that also required various treatment strategies. at this point, the bottom line seems to be 'mindfulness'

Clueless said...

Mostly, it is for medication management, but my psychiatrist is also a very good clinician. He defers therapy to my psychotherapist. However, he obviously enhances therapy and does a little also.

Interesting that he originally was going to be a psychoanalyst, but switched to psychiatry.