- Joined
- May 26, 2007
- Messages
- 154
- Reaction score
- 0
If there doesn't appear to be something medically wrong with someone, but they are still having personal problems, do they still see a psychiatrist or a psychologist?
Why do people consider using psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is a partnership between an individual and a professional such as a psychologist who is licensed and trained to help people understand their feelings and assist them with changing their behavior. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one-third of adults in the United States experience an emotional or substance abuse problem. Nearly 25 percent of the adult population suffers at some point from depression or anxiety.
People often consider psychotherapy, also known simply as therapy, under the following circumstances:
- They feel an overwhelming and prolonged sense of sadness and helplessness, and they lack hope in their lives.
- Their emotional difficulties make it hard for them to function from day to day. For example, they are unable to concentrate on assignments and their job performance suffers as a result.
- Their actions are harmful to themselves or to others. For instance, they drink too much alcohol and become overly aggressive.
- They are troubled by emotional difficulties facing family members or close friends.
It is true that a clinical psychologist is considered doctorate level, but psychologists can have as little as a bachelor's degree to work in a number of settings, ie schools, community centers.
This still doesn't take away from the fact that a person with mental health concerns should see a psychiatrist first before considering other options.
You said it best in your own post. It's defined by each state's licensing board. There are a number of states where a person with a bachelor's degree can lawfully identify him or herself as being a psychologist.
The person should see a psychiatrist for initial evaluation. Although the original question was assuming that there was nothing medically wrong with the patient, it leads to another question: who decided that there was nothing medically wrong with the patient?
It is true that a clinical psychologist is considered doctorate level, but psychologists can have as little as a bachelor's degree to work in a number of settings, ie schools, community centers.
You said it best in your own post. It's defined by each state's licensing board. There are a number of states where a person with a bachelor's degree can lawfully identify him or herself as being a psychologist.
Not this crap again.....citation please? I asked you about this in another thread, but you conveniently never responded....
Btw...it is a protected term, but I'd love to see your 'evidence'.
-t
Quote:
What are the qualifications of a licensed psychologist?
A doctorate in psychology; two years of supervised training in a specialty and passing the New York State examination for licensure.
I'm reposting this from the other thread, to correct exaggerations:
1) You don't see anyone going around saying "beware of physicians," because there are foreign medical grads in the US with M.S. degrees because they skipped college, graduated from India's med school equivalent, and passed the boards here. These are the exceptions, not the rule. You're trying to insult a profession by talking about freak exceptions. No need to get high and mighty, and make exaggerated arguments that don't apply to 99% of practioners.
2) Furthermore, the exemptions quote that you pasted is actually vague, and makes no indication of how and when exemptions are used in the real world. If you look at the next paragraph, even advanced doctoral-level students in psychology are not allowed to used the term psychologist, and must use intern or trainee even though they have masters degrees.
3) I challenge you to find someone who claims to be a licensed psychologist in NY using PsychologyToday.coms therapist listings, and only has a bachelors degree. I just ran a search for a Manhattan zip code using psychologist as a search parameter, and all had PhDs/PsyDs.
4) You can safely assume, even in New York, that 99% of licensed psychologists who are advertising their services publicly have a doctoral degree. If youre really paranoid and in doubt, just ask. In fact, thats the default state law (from the New York State Psychological Association's website):
http://www.nyspa.org/displaycommon.c...qualifications
positivepsych, having quite a bit of familiarity with Columbia University, I don't see how the title of "Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons" supports your claim that PhDs pre-date physicians. Physicians have existed back into antiquity. Hippocrates lived in the 4th century BC. Modern universities did not appear until the Middle Ages (AD, mind you). If anything, it is PhDs who are trading on the names of physicians, commonly referred to as "doctors." It's clear that you need to review your world history.
Doctor (gen.: doctoris) means teacher in Latin and is a contraction of the Greek διδάκτωρ, didaktōr, teacher, from the verb διδάσκειν, didaskein, to teach. It has been used continuously as an honored academic title for over a millennium in Europe, where it dates back to the rise of the university. This use spread to the Americas, former European colonies, and is now prevalent in most of the world. As a prefix — abbreviated "Dr"— its primary designation is a person who has obtained a doctorate (that is, a doctoral degree), which is the highest rank of academic degree awardable.
You're wrong. And you need a history lesson.
I never said PhDs predate physicians. I said that the use of the title Doctor was used by PhDs well before physicians, and that physicans borrowed the title from PhDs:
The past participle of Latin docere (to tell, inform) is doctus. Appending the agential suffix -tor leads to the realization that the original meaning of
the word doctor as it entered 14th Century English academia
was: a scholar who had attained a sufficiently high degree of
knowledge in a subject as to be competent enough to teach it.
It's like feeding a troll... This is my last post, and I'm done with correcting someone who has a superiority complex and won't listen to reason or substantive evidence.
I agree with you whopper, the animosity is silly, but its only coming from psychiatry towards psychology in this thread. Like I stated earlier, I have tremendous respect for the field of psychiatry. It's too bad the feeling is not mutual amongst some psychiatrists (e.g. PsychMD2100)
If you want a proper citation (and since you only believe physicians are credible), here's a published article by Nicholas Bartenhagen, M.D., published in a peer-reviewed scholarly research journal:
Medicine, Myth & Metaphor: II. Jason and Medea: Iatros and Medicus
NH Bartenhagen - GUTHRIE JOURNAL, 1999 - becklibrary.org
http://becklibrary.org/GuthrieJournal/68_4_99/141_2.pdf
I would hardly consider The Guthrie Journal to be a well-known psychiatric journal. Also, I never once hinted that I "only believe physicians are credible". If you're going to make claims, you've got to use the words that I've used--not put words in my mouth.
The vast majority of the psychological literature is trash. Your claim about psychological literature, especially as it relates to Dx, is laughable.