One branch of medicine that we all have heard about is psychiatry. Psychiatrists are medical doctors that study, treat and diagnose mental illnesses and altered behaviors. They receive trainings that allow them to distinguish and treat several forms of mental illnesses.
Psychiatrists diagnose and treat disorders like depression, schizophrenia and anxiety by using medication, laboratory studies and psychotherapy. Psychiatrists also focus on mood disorders and neuropsychiatry.
Each year, approximately 2 million people are believed to suffer from schizophrenia in the United States. This brain disease is severe, chronic and disabling. People that suffer schizophrenia have different perceptions of reality, hallucinations, illusions and delusions.
Anxiety Disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States. Some of these disorders are Panic Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Phobias, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders distinguished 11 major personality disorders; some of them are Narcissistic Disorder, Paranoid Disorder, Schizoid Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Borderline Disorder, Antisocial Disorder and Schizotypal Disorder.
Psychotherapy has areas like cognitive behavioral therapy, supportive therapy and psychodynamic therapy.
Psychiatry is divided in subspecialties. Some of them are child and adolescent psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry and addiction psychiatry.
Becoming a psychiatrist is not an easy process. First, the student must graduate from medical school, then complete an internship, pass a state licensing exam, and after finishing three years of a residency program of psychiatry, there are still more exams to take to be certified by the board in order to be recognized as a psychiatrist.
There have been numerous famous psychiatrists throughout history. Some of them are Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, John Cade, Milton Erickson, Emil Kraepelin, W. H. R. Rivers, Antoni Kepinski, Kay Redfield Jamison and Richard von Krafft-Ebbing.