Speaker 1: Welcome to Grad Life Grind. If you're new to this channel, thank you for checking it out. And if you're already a subscriber, thanks for being back again. My name is Arielle, and I'm a PhD student in clinical psychology. And in this channel, I bring you information about the mental health field and talk about my journey as a PhD student. Today, I want to address a question that I get pretty often, and that is, what is the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist? Now, if you're in the field of psychology, then this is a no-brainer for you. But I realize that a lot of people in the general population don't know the answer to this. So, long story short, a psychiatrist is a medical doctor, and they went to medical school, and they are similar to a general physician or a gynecologist. They just chose their specialty to be psychiatry. And that means, since they have a medical degree, that they can prescribe medications. Psychologists do have doctorate degrees, so they are referred to as doctor, but they do not have the power to prescribe medications. So, to simplify it, a psychiatrist has an MD and can prescribe medication. A psychologist probably has a PhD or a PsyD, which is a doctor of psychology degree, and they cannot prescribe medication. So, this distinction between psychiatry and psychology is actually pretty interesting because the root words for psychology are ology and psych, which are basically the science of the psyche and the mind. But the root words for psychiatry are actually the psyche and healing. So, a lot of times, therapists or psychologists are viewed as healers, and medical doctors are actually viewed as scientists. In this case, it's actually swapped. Psychiatrists are the medical doctors who can help with healing in terms of diagnosis, medicine, and research. At the same time, psychologists are really involved in healing through therapy and also doing psychological research and science. So, I hope this is clear by now. Therapists do not prescribe medication. However, some psychiatrists choose to provide medication and also do psychotherapy with some of their patients. Like in any field, the degree you get in psychology dictates the kind of career options that you have. With that being said, there are still a lot of different things that psychiatrists and psychologists can do, and a lot of times they work together on research teams or treatment teams. Now, things get a little bit tricky when we talk about the word therapist instead of psychologist. So, you do not have to have a doctorate degree to be a therapist. However, you definitely have to have a medical degree to be a practicing psychiatrist. And I can definitely cover in a different video all the different degrees in psychology that you can become a licensed therapist with because there's a huge range there. I just want to clarify that even if someone is a licensed psychologist or a licensed therapist or a licensed clinician, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have a doctorate degree because you can practice with a master's in mental health counseling or a master's in family and marriage therapy. So, just because someone is a therapist doesn't mean that they have the title doctor. And just because someone doesn't have the title of doctor doesn't mean that they aren't an awesome therapist. But if you are seeking to get treatment that involves medication, you definitely want to make sure that your psychiatrist has an MD. Now, the next time that someone confuses psychologists with psychiatrists, you will have all the information you need to correct them about what the difference is. And if you're someone who's interested in working in the mental health field and you're not sure which to pick, maybe this video clarified a few things for you. If you want to be a psychiatrist, then you definitely need to go to med school. And if you want to be a therapist, there are a range of degrees that are available to you in order to reach that goal. If you learned absolutely anything from this video, please give it a like and also subscribe to my channel if you want more information about the mental health field or my experience as a PhD student. And thank you for checking out Grad Life Grind.