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whats the difference?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
between a psycologist and a psychiatrist?
and :
i went to the docs, and he said that physicaly i'm fine, mentaly, i'm not at all and i need to go see a psychiatrist.....so, i'm glad it's not me being all OTT and stuff. finally a step in the right direction!:)
thanks to all of you who've pestered me about going to the docs....i don't really know why i was scared about going in the first place....
and :
i went to the docs, and he said that physicaly i'm fine, mentaly, i'm not at all and i need to go see a psychiatrist.....so, i'm glad it's not me being all OTT and stuff. finally a step in the right direction!:)
thanks to all of you who've pestered me about going to the docs....i don't really know why i was scared about going in the first place....
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Psychiatrists deal with the more medial side of the brain. They diagnose mental diseases such as schizophrenia, depression etc. And I think they're the ones that prescribe drugs like Prozac, Ritalin, etc.
psychologist: someone with a degree in psychology. most have a post-grad qualification, but they're not doctors in a medical sense, and can't prescibe things. their big thing is therapy and counselling, and you'll probably get sent to one of these guys if it's decided that's what you need.
what other options are there to prozac and seroxat.....i.e. something like prozac but thats not going to turn me into a zombie....
In other words there are a fistful of SSRI's to choose between.
i read somewhere it was the only SSRI still able to be prescribed for under 18s. I know they definitely withdrew seroxat from juvenile use.
Really? Curious, there are others Flux something which I had a couple of mates using, basically like Prozac but with less side effects.
Prozac is dirt cheap now though because its out of patent so maybe thats the reason.
whole article here if you're interested
do you mean fluoxetine? that's generic prozac. strikes me as odd, too, cause out of all the ADs i was on, prozac had the worst effect.
I was on prozac for a while & it didn't make me a zombie.
That might be the one, I cant keep the names of all of them straight. But, well as you say Prozac is known for having more side effects than some of the others.
Perhaps its the one allowed because it has had the most research done on it?
Personally I'm really not convinced that under 18's should be given them at all when mental health treatment would be more effective anyway.
Psychologist - comes from 'psyche' (mind) and 'logos' (study, reasoning)
Psychiatrist - comes from 'psyche' also, and 'iatros' (doctor).
So I assume it's something like a psychiatrist deals with the medical side of it, while a psychologist is more to do with thought processes and reasoning about the way your mind works.
i know it doesn't do that to everyone, but the 3 people i know who have taken prozac, 2 have become really zombie like and thye other really aggressive.
Although it did make me a bit hyperactive at times.
oh don't worry, i've got a fair few years left in me yet.
i've desided to try some "alternative help" seeing as i really don't want to be put on AD's and it seems to be working really well.
Fluoxetine did me a lot of good, it didn't make me zombie-like and I didn't suffer when I started "forgetting" to take my pills like a good little boy.
Fluoxetine is also used for Attention Deficit Disorder I think, so that will probably be why it is passed for use on under-18s.
I don't think ADs should be prescribed to adolescents though, because of the imbalanced hormones and because most just need to whinge at a counsellor for a few months.
If all they had given me is a counsellor ro whinge at for a few months I'd be dead by now. I hate to admit it but the ad's have probably saved my life. I agree that doctors are too willing to give out ad's sometimes without a psychological assessment - last year when I was only just 14 I went to the GP about feeling depressed and left with a prescription but no referral to anyone. It made me feel like he was fobbing me off... I only took the meds for 2 weeks cos he wasn't a regular at the surgery and I didn't feel comfortable having to see stranger after stranger. After months of the nhs fucking me about I've been on prozac for a few months. I've been so reluctant to take it and have come off it once to the extent that it made me crash down so low that I attempted suicide. Now I'm mending. Very slowly. And I can't thank my counsellor thingy for that because she's useless. Prozac hasn't made me aggressive or a zombie, it's made me more stable. I'm still finding life so hard but I've been slightly lifted. And that can only be a good thing
and they nearly killed me.
Your doctor carried out a "psychological assessment" before deciding to prescribe you an antidepressant. That is what they do during the consultation.
Counselling is useful for some, but depression is an unpredictable condition and it is debatable whether someone as young as 14 can be truly depressed.
Glad you're mending anyway
no he didn't, actually.
A doctor will always diagnose you before he gives you treatment. He doesn't need to sit you down on a couch and ask for all your woes or ask what you see in ink blots, just by talking to you and you describing the symptoms he can form a diagnosis from that.
I highly doubt you would have walked in there and he just gives you a prescription without even trying to work out what's up. Otherwise he might as well as gave you cough medicine.
That's the nature of ADs though.
What works for me and Jane won't work for other people. Ellie was a zombie on Prozac (though she was better than she was on effexor), they made you worse, it's all because they don't actually know what ADs are best for which person.
It's like the contraceptive pill, some work brilliantly for some people and some disagree muchly with some people.
He did, but GPs are not trained beyond the general. He assessed you with depression, gave you ADs and told you to come back.
It's what happens.
I was given fluoxetine, then I had my dose doubled before my doctor referred me to the psychological unit in Newcastle.
I did say most.
The hormones have a depressive effect on many teens, and I think a lot who think that they are "depressed" are actually just teen angsting, even if they don't realise it.
I think I probably was to an extent, since I've come out of my teens I've been better (though not well) even though I'm a bona fide screw-up:)