Difference between Psychologists and Psychiatrists

Are you the one that can prescribe medication? That might be the top question that I get. As a Psychology graduate student, I then usually have to disappoint the person and tell them that I can't prescribe them the delicious drugs they crave.

While the ability to prescribe medication is certainly one way to decipher between the two (and even this manner of differentiation is slightly changing as Psychologists have won prescribing rights in some USA states), there are certainly more relevant differences imo.

It might first help to look at the similarities.

Both assess, diagnose and treat mental disorders.

The difference is that they do these things from a different perspective and with a different tool-set. In some circumstances, one perspective or tool-set might be more ideal.

Psychiatrists are physicians or doctors first. They get a generalist medical training during medical school, and then during residency (where they specialize in Psychiatry) they learn about the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of the most severe mental illnesses (particularly how these illnesses relate to medicine/physiology), Psychopharmacology (a big word for how drugs effect the brain), how to handle emergency psychiatric issues, and they are often taught even some form of psychotherapy (ie CBT).

If that is too abstract, let me give you an example.

Did you know that there are some kinds of infections that can mimic schizophrenia?

A Psychiatrist would be trained to pick up on that. There are many other examples of physical or physiological problems that seem like mental health issues on the surface, and a Psychiatrist would be well trained to differentiate in this respect.

They are also better trained to deal with very severe mental problems, in large part because medication is often the only thing that tends to stabilize such patients.

Psychologists on the other hand attend graduate school. Graduate school typically extends four to six years after an undergrad degree (4 years). They will spend that time doing a combination of research, clinical work, and coursework.

Psychologists also study the symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of mental illness but instead of focusing on how physiology effects mental illness..they study human learning, cognition (working memory, attention, judgement), perception, personality traits, society/culture, development, neuroanatomy, intelligence, neurobiology...to understand the relationship of these factors and human behavior.

Ie How does a specific personality trait influence the development of Depression? Does x personality trait make a mental disorder more likely to develop? does x personality trait make the clinical presentation different?

If medication is the tool of Psychiatrists, psychological measurement, through different assessment tools, is the Psychologists tool. Psychologists have developed many different assessment tools that objectively measure intelligence, cognitive ability, knowledge, personality traits, etc This is crucial as it makes the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of mental problems much more objective and quantitative.

I hope this post has been useful in differentiating between Psychologist and Psychiatrists.