Name: So You Want to Be a PSYCHIATRIST [Ep. 18]
Uploaded: 2020-10-24T19:25:55.000Z
Duration: 16 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

You like the idea of being a shrink, doing talk therapy, and having people all figured

Let's debunk the public perception myths of what it means to be a psychiatrist, and

Welcome to our next installment in So You Want to Be.

In this series, we highlight a specific specialty within medicine, such as psychiatry, and help

You can find the other specialties on our So You Want to Be playlist.

If you want to vote in upcoming polls to decide what future specialties we cover, make sure

If you'd like to see what being a psychiatrist looks like, check out my second channel, Kevin

Jubbal, M.D., where we featured Dr. Petey Kass in a Day in the Life of a Psychiatrist.

Psychiatry is the field of medicine focused on understanding and treating mental health

Psychiatrists use the Diagnosable and Statistics Manual, currently in it's fifth iteration,

hence the name DSM-V, in assessing a patient's constellation of symptoms and determining

But psychiatrists can help patients with other conditions, even if they aren't classified

DSM illnesses – including psychological distress from pain, trauma, difficult relationships,

If you've ever confused psychiatrists with psychologists, you're not alone.

Psychiatrists are medical doctors, meaning they have their MD or DO, and they've completed

4 years of medical school, followed by residency, and sometimes also fellowship.

They can diagnose and treat mental conditions using either medication or non-medication

While psychiatrists can use medications to treat patients' more severe symptoms, they

rely on talk therapy training to help people with more mild symptoms, or, with problems

that wouldn't necessarily respond to medications.

Psychologists, on the other hand, have either Master's or PhD level training, and while

they're able to diagnose and treat mental illness, they can only use non-medication

Sometimes you'll see psychiatrists and psychologists working together, with psychologists focusing

on therapy, and psychiatrists usually focusing their expertise on medication, although they

While some think that psychiatrists go into the field because they subconsciously want

to fix their own problems, or that they're highly eclectic and strange, this isn't

As a psychiatrist, you'll have to be adept at relating to a wide range of individuals,

and that also requires well developed interpersonal skills.

And while it has a useful handbook, psychiatry is much more than just memorizing DSM criteria

Psychiatrists use the DSM as a guide, but they formulate patients more holistically

than that – they're looking at the psychological, socioeconomic, and physiologic causes of their

symptoms as well, not just the symptoms themselves.

There are a few ways to categorize psychiatry.

As a clinical psychiatrist, you'll be seeing patients, doing therapy, and generating treatment

If practicing inpatient, you'll see patients admitted to the psychiatric ward or consult

service, meaning those treated primarily in other areas of the hospital, but requiring

As a consultant, you'll educate primary teams on various psychiatric and psychological

conditions affecting their patients and provide them with your psychiatric treatment recommendations.

With inpatient, you're dealing with more severe cases that often require more critical

These patients often have multiple psychiatric conditions and are generally more complicated

than those you would see in an outpatient clinic.

There's also a great deal of medicine involved as these patients often have multiple medical

issues that either worsen or mimic psychiatric symptoms.

For example, certain medical issues like cancer, brain injuries, or COVID can result in delirium

or agitation, which can both look like psychosis or depression.

With outpatient, you'll be primarily combining psychotherapy with medication management for

patients with whom you'll have more longitudinal relationships, as they'll come to the office

With outpatient, you also have more flexibility in managing things beyond traditional psychiatric

diagnoses, like sleep, pain, or distress from various stressors.

If you focus on research, you can choose from bench or clinical work.

With bench research, you often work in a lab and do research at the cellular or molecular

level to explore foundational neurobiology that may help explain the brain function of

With clinical research, you could explore the efficacy of different medications and

treatment options in treating specific patient populations or psychiatric conditions.

Interventional psychiatry is an exciting new area exploring brain stimulation through trans

cranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS for short, ketamine, and deep brain stimulation.

In an academic setting, you can work either primarily inpatient or outpatient, but associated

This offers less flexibility in your practice, but will allow you the opportunity to do research,

work with medical students and residents, and pursue academic leadership.

You'll be working at a medical center that is likely pushing to advance the field, but

will be at the whim of the bureaucracy of the hospital, and your appointment types,

meaning appointment length and therapy vs. medication management ratios, will have a

In a community setting, you'll work with hospitals or outpatient clinics run by the

county or city public health departments.

Patients will primarily be Medicaid or uninsured, meaning you'll have the opportunity to work

with underserved patients and a greater proportion who are severely mentally ill.

Dual diagnoses amongst this patient population is not uncommon, meaning a substance use disorder

For these reasons, this work can be highly rewarding, as this is a population with less

access, but it can also be highly frustrating working with a socioeconomically disadvantaged

population, as medication and appointment adherence may be problematic, as is access

Private practice entails one or more physicians setting up their own shop outside of a larger

They have complete control and autonomy, seeing patients as they choose.

This has the greatest amount of flexibility in most domains, including how much they charge,

which insurances they take, the balance of therapy versus medication, and visit durations.

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So You Want to Be a PSYCHIATRIST [Ep. 18]

anxiety

specific

mental

depression