What are the most common treatments psychiatrists use?

Psychiatrists use a wide range of treatments-including various forms of psychotherapy, medications and hospitalization-according to the needs of each patient.

Psychotherapy is a systematic treatment method in which, during regularly scheduled meetings, the psychiatrist and patient discuss troubling problems and feelings. The physician helps patients understand the basis of these problems and find solutions. Depending on the extent of the problem, treatment may take just a few sessions over one or two weeks, or many sessions over several years.

Psychiatrists use many forms of psychotherapy. These are psychotherapies that help patients change behaviors or thought patterns, psychotherapies that help patients explore the effect of past relationships and experiences on present behaviors, psychotherapies that treat troubled couples or families together, and more treatments that are tailored to help solve other problems in specific ways.

Psychoanalysis is an intensive form of individual psychotherapy which requires frequent sessions over several years. The psychiatrist, who must have additional years of training in psychoanalysis, helps the patient to recall and examine events, memories and feelings from the past, many of them long forgotten, as a means of helping the patient understand present feelings and behavior and make changes as necessary.

When do psychiatrists use medications?

In the same way that your family doctor can prescribe medications to help patients with high blood pressure or thyroid problems, psychiatrists can prescribe a number of medications that are effective against mental illnesses such as depression, manic-depression, panic disorder, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. Psychiatrists use medications when thorough evaluation of a patient suggests that medication may correct imbalances in brain chemistry that are thought to be involved in some mental disorders. Psychiatrists usually use medications in combination with psychotherapy.