What type of doctor is a psychiatrist?

Answer 1

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental illness. As part of their evaluation of the patient, psychiatrists are one of only a few mental health professionals who may prescribe psychiatric medication, conduct physical examinations, order and interpret laboratory tests and electroencephalograms, and may order brain imaging studies such as computed tomography or computed axial tomography,magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography scanning.

Answer 2

Psychiatry is a field of medicine which focuses on the etiology and treatment of mental illness. Psychiatrists are licensed medical doctors, however, they have yet to find the etiology of any diagnosable mental illness in which they treat.

Since the introduction of Thorazine in the mid 1950's, the mainstay of treatment has been psychotropic drugs thought to help correct chemical imbalances in the brain but scientists and researchers have yet to find any chemical imbalance.

Robert Whitaker wrote an interesting book called Anatomy of An Epidemic that has some interesting data regarding what scientists and researchers have studied and concluded during the psychopharmacology era.

Answer 3

Clinical psychiatrists specialize in the treatment of people with mental disorders by providing their patients with an environment to talk openly and think about issues they find troublesome, and have the capability of prescribing medications to treat symptoms that may be particularly problematic (e.g. depression, Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc.).

Answer 4

A psychiatrist is a doctor that works with mental health.

Answer 5

a medical practitioner specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of medical illness

Answer 6

Doctor, shrink