Ohh, Psychiatrists. I’ve never liked you guys in the mental health profession. You guys have everything but rarely do anything right. When you think of the career of psychiatrists, you think of prescribing medication. Did you know that psychiatrist can do so much more than that? According to
Most of the time, people are referred to a psychiatrist after they have visited a doctor or have seen a therapist. Their doctor or therapist told them that they need to see a psychiatrist to get their medication for their mental health problems. They go into their office and pay for their medication and boom, they are gone. That’s it? No, it can’t be. For the most part, it is true. In my opinion, psychiatrists don’t do enough in the mental health field to be considered “helpful” really. All of that training and schooling, just to prescribe medication and give diagnosis. That’s not enough for me, and here’s why.
The Career of Psychiatrists
There’s a few reasons why I don’t like psychiatrists. Some of the reasons are:
- Salary
- Ability
- Their actual work
- Results of their work
Let’s look at each reason in more detail, shall we.
Salary
According to USNews, psychiatrists make a median salary of $208,000 in 2017. They make that much money for doing nothing. If you look at the salary of Therapists and Counselors, they make like 1/4 of that. It’s like a scam if you think about it. If you live in California, you would make almost 6 times the amount of a mental health counselor. Mental health counselors only make around $30,000-$40,000 a year, while doing quality work for people. It’s like these mental health professions are underappreciated, while psychiatrists are overappreciated and overrated.
Ability
Like I mentioned before, psychiatrists generally prescribe medication to treat mental health illnesses. If you look at the description of what psychiatrists do, all of them say “does not counsel clients”. Why don’t they counsel or give therapy to clients? The salary would make more sense if they actually did that for people. They have the ability to counsel and give therapy to people, but they choose not to. Why do we even have psychiatrists in the first place? Can’t we just give therapists the ability to prescribe medication? They already study a lot about mental health disorders, so it can’t hurt to have them prescribe it.
It saves people a lot of money and time. Maybe a payment plan could be implemented for people that need medication in therapy. Sounds like a good idea on paper. It just seems like the career of psychiatrists isn’t that great when you look at the details.
Their Actual Work
Let’s take a closer look at what psychiatrists actually do. As we know, psychiatrists prescribe medication and diagnose clients. How does psychiatrists diagnose people? Well, psychiatrists diagnose people with numerous lab tests and psychological assessments. These tests and assessments are used to determine what mental health disorders people have. As much as I hate diagnosis, I have to admit that this is actually important. For people that want to know what is wrong with them, lab tests and assessments are good indicators of that.
According to the American Psychiatry Association, psychiatrists use psychotherapy, medications, psychosocial interventions and other treatments to help people with their mental health. I don’t know how much I can agree with the psychotherapy part. Psychotherapy is not really used by psychiatrists. The one thing that psychiatrists do the most is give out medications. You will see this more in counseling and therapy. Psychiatrists are more like psychologists in a sense because of the tests and assessments that they do. It’s strange that psychiatrists are more related to therapists and counselors. In reality, they are more related to clinical psychogists. In my opinion, clinical psychologists is the best mental health profession. Let’s go into detail about the results of the work of psychiatrists.
Results of Their Work
If you recall to a previous post I made about diagnosis and medication, you know that a lot of people are misdiagnosed. You can have two therapists in the same room with on client and they will both diagnosed them with a different mental health condition. One therapist can diagnosis you with major depression disorder. The other can diagnosis you with bipolar disorder. Next thing you’ll know, you will have medication that doesn’t work. Over 22 million people are misdiagnosed each year. That number is going to increase each year if diagnosis doesn’t improve.
Medication can be a great thing, but it’s not. Why does medication come with a large number of side effects to solve one issue? It’s like taking one step forward and ten steps backwards. Certain mental health conditions need medication due to how serious the condition is. That’s fine for me, but why are there so many pills for one issue? There’s like 8 or 9 different pills for depression. Why is there a need for all of these?
When you look at medication at a deeper level for psychiatrists, they prescribe medication and give the client a treatment plan for them. For example, “take one pill every three hours”. There’s one big problem with that: it’s hard to track. Someone can easily take 3 pills every hour and come back way earlier than you expected. Even worse, the pills could not be effective and the psychiatrist has to up your dosage. There’s just too many risks and red flags with medication.
Conclusion
When you look at the career of psychiatrists, there’s a lot missing. A lot of important valuable training and schooling for diagnosis and medication. Therapists should be trained to prescribe medication. They already assess clients and give them a diagnosis during the first session. Just leave the lab testing and the psychosocial interventions for psychologists. They do a lot of testing anyways, so you really won’t lose anything.
Take that giant salary of theirs and distribut it towards therapists and counselors. They don’t make enough money for the work that they do and it makes no sense. Have therapists and counselors make an average of $60,000-$80,000 a year instead of $40,000-$50,000.
I’m going to end the post like this. The career of psychiatrists is a confusing one. When you think about it, psychiatrists are like the jack-of-all-trades of the mental health field. They do a little bit of what therapists do with assessment and diagnosis. They do a little bit of what psychologists do with lab testing. You can even count doctors into the mix if you think about treatment and medication.
Dear Psychiatrists, Why Are You So Bad?
