Ok
So pretend my mother or sister fainted or had a seizure or a cut from a knife. Will a Psychiatrist be able to help treat the problem and save them?
In other words, can a psychiatrist diagnose other illnesses other than depression or schizo from outside?
First off, welcome to SDN and congrats on finding the site so early in your (I'm assuming) future medical career. It's full of invaluable information. In general, I would say that you want to be actively posting on the board at your level (i.e. hsSDN - high school SDN), occasionally asking questions on the next board up (i.e. Pre-allo, pre-osteo), and lurking and not posting much on the other, more advanced boards (i.e. speciality boards like this one). That being said, if you have a legitimate question and aren't just trolling, I tend to say it's fine.
Anyways, to answer your question, yes, we are medical doctors and can help care for family or strangers in those situations. We actually have a fair amount of neurology training, so fainting (aka syncope, a common neurological complaint) and seizures I'd be pretty darn helpful with actually. A serious cut, I'd be able to do solid first aid and get them safely to next level care (ER). I probably wouldn't try to sew it myself anymore though, although I was a fair stitch during medical school when I had more practice.
Now, in an apocalypse-type situation, we psychiatrists would probably be relegated to primary care, and I think most of us would handle it ok. I'd refer to literature for a bunch of things that I don't have committed to memory anymore (advanced infectious disease, OBGYN, surgery), but I could handle most every day primary care, assuming I had some basic supplies and basic meds.
A good psychiatrist will actually do a fair amount of preventive care screening, as many of out patients neglect their physical health for various reasons. In the seriously mentally ill (i.e. schizophrenics) they often simply can't function at a level high enough to do this themselves. In more moderately mentally ill, ADHD for example, they forget or don't plan well and miss appointments or don't go for years, make impulsive choices, etc.
Finally, a lot of patients with mental illness get less than ideal care from their medical doctors because they are either annoying, complicated, or just can't communicate well with their doctor. This often results in the medical doctor just getting frustrated with them and referring them to us for psychiatric care and then hoping they never see them again. This means we are often the only people screening to make sure their mental illness isn't a result of medical illness. I've caught a couple cases of hemochromatosis (an iron storage disease), thyroid cancers, stomach cancers, lung cancers, thyroid diseases, and a host of other illness that medical doctors missed in psych patients.
So yes, we're medical doctors too.
