Should I see a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist?

Credit: CrashCourse

“What’s the difference?”

Psychologists and Psychiatrists share a common goal: helping people feel better. Both disciplines are essential in the research and development of addressing and improving mental and emotional health.

One key difference between the disciplines is that psychiatrists are medical doctors and will generally approach your issues from a pharmacological perspective, while clinical psychologists focus on psychotherapy. Psychotherapy or talk therapy allows a psychologist to work with you in identifying and addressing the underlying causes of your emotional and mental suffering through behavioural and thought modification. Psychologists are also responsible for conducting psychological and psychometric testing, which are critical in assessing a person’s mental state and determining the most effective management plan.

Simply put: psychologists and psychiatrists work as a team to make you feel better.

Because of the division of responsibilities between psychiatrists and psychologists, the frequency of your visits are also different – a follow-up visit to a psychiatrists typically takes place at intervals scheduled around medication while psychotherapy is beneficial only if you participate with regularity i.e. once a week or fortnight.

Fun fact: Psychiatrists are also trained to perform electro-convulsive therapy or ECT.

Neuroplasticity and Psychotherapy

No, it is not the latest scientific breakthrough in biodegradable plastics that are actually biodegradable.

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change its structures and functions by establishing or rearranging its neural connections.

Let us explain.

Our brains are constantly building new cells from the moment we are born. These cells make an incredible number of neural connections as they grow, and these connections underpin our capacity to learn and remember what we need and use, as well as our capacity to forget what we don’t. For example, as a child learns a new skill, cycling for example; new connections are formed in the brain. As a child continues to practice this skill, his or her neural connections will become denser and stronger with each repeated activation.

It is similar to wading through a thick wheatfield for the very first time. Sickle in hand, one has to bash through the thick vegetation and forge a new path in order to get across. Eventually, you would have created a pathway from your starting point to your destination. This process is analogous to neuroplasticity, where the new pathway represents a neural connection that you have formed in your brain through the repeated activation of the same set of neurons. The pathway becomes easier and more pleasant to traverse the more it is used.

Neuroplasticity and Psychotherapy

However, while neuroplastic changes are often thought of in a positive light, such as learning a new skill or knowledge, the same process applies to unhealthy and unhelpful thoughts and behaviours.

Maladaptive thoughts, distressing emotions and unhelpful behaviours that underlie many mental disorders are formed in the same way. For example, the negative thoughts and feelings characteristic of clinical depression may become entrenched and reflexive as a result of maladaptive plasticity, which is why it is becomes incredibly hard for sufferers to break out of this vicious cycle. In fact, many mental disorders are a direct result of the formation of such undesirable neural connections.

Through a good understanding of our brains and neuroplasticity, clinical psychologists employ various psychotherapies to reduce the strength of these undesirable neural connections while promoting the use of the desirable ones. Your psychologist will work with you to disrupt negative pathways and decrease neural activity in particular areas of the brain. As new (and healtier) pathway are forged, the old ones eventually fall into disuse. Much like Chernobyl.

Tip: While neuroplasticity has been observed to a lesser extent in adults than in children, adults are just as capable of effecting adaptive neuroplastic changes and neurological growth through consistent effort and by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

When should I seek psychological intervention?

Seeking psychological intervention*

(*basically, seeking professional help)

Credit: American Psychological Association

Visit http://www.apa.org/helpcenter to explore this and other helpful videos in this series

“What good does talking do?”

“That’s what friends are for?”

“What can a psychologist do? Isn’t psychotherapy just ‘talking’? I talk to my family about my problems”

These are familiar refrains among those with anti-therapy attitudes.

But don’t get us wrong.

Support from family and friends you trust is often your first line of defence. However, the “talking” therapy that you will have with your psychologist involves so much more. Clinical psychologists undergo many years of education, supervised training and workplace experiences. This allows them to diagnose and address psychological, intellectual, emotional, and behavioural maladjustment issues ranging from daily stressors to severe clinical psychopathology.

What is Psychotherapy

Credit: The School of Life

Repairs & Tune-ups for your mind

Think of your body, your bones and your flesh as your hardware. Important physiological tools for your survival.

Your thoughts, emotions, and feelings: this is your software. Your software controls your hardware, dictates your mood, and is responsible for your well-being. It’s important stuff. But your software may not always work as well as you’d like it to. Software issues cannot be resolved by telling the problem to go away, the way you would give your old television an occasional knock (and thereby revealing this author’s age…). Life happens, and you may not always have the necessary tools to rough it out. Or you may simply need the occasional tune up. This is psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy is understanding and dealing with your inner thoughts and emotions productively

with your psychologist, in a completely honest environment. Effective psychotherapy requires deep engagement and constant two-way feedback. And research shows that psychotherapy is most effective and helpful when an honest dialogue takes place between you and your psychologist.

The techniques a Clinical Psychologist employs during psychotherapy are developed over decades of research and involve more than unstructured conversing and listening. Clinical Psychologists assess, diagnose and provide therapy for individuals suffering from psychological distress and mental illness. They also perform psychometric testing such as IQ assessments for adults or kids.

How Psychologists Address Mental Disorders

Clinical Psychologists recognise behaviour or thought patterns objectively, more so than those closest to you, who may have stopped noticing, or perhaps not all. Your psychologist will be able to identify the next steps that you may face in your challenge, and offer coping strategies. Their observations may sound similar to what your family or friends may say, but an experienced psychologist using their clinical skills framing these conversation in a therapeutic setting will make a significant difference.

If your difficulties have been ongoing for some time, or would like preventive therapy before your difficulty becomes insurmountable, now is the time to seek help from a trained psychologist.