Sunday, 8 September 2013

Orange County Psychiatry Is Available To Assist People With Mental Illness

By Cecile Ingram


Preparations to be admitted to a medical school start early. During your college years take courses in science, biology, math, chemistry and physics. Your grades must be excellent and your degree should be in one of the sciences. Volunteer work in a hospital setting helps you pursue the goal of practicing Orange County psychiatry.

There are four years of medical school before you are graduated. After that, you will be admitted into a residency program. For psychiatry, it is a four year program. While you are treating patients under supervision, you can decide which area of psychiatry you want to specialize in.

When the residency is completed, there is a licensing requirement to fulfill. Each physician must be licensed in the state where he or she will practice. After passing that exam, there is an option to take another to become board certified. That certification will be in effect for a decade and may lead to more job opportunities.

A patient is assessed prior to being treated. A mental and physical exam is conducted. Psychological tests are administered. Special situations might require neuroimaging or other advanced testing to make an accurate diagnosis. A manual, the DSM, gives the criterion for each mental disorder.

The ICD is another manual that helps to identify the disorder that each patient has. Following a diagnosis, the treatment prescribed may be a combination of medication and psychotherapy. If the mental illness is severe, he or she will be treated in a hospital setting. If less severe, he or she can be treated on an outpatient schedule.

Around 1967, it was recognized that some treatments, usually those used on patients with severe disorders, were damaging and possibly dangerous. There was an operation that removed a portion of the frontal lobe of the brain. The lobotomy removed aggression, but, also left the patient in a damaged condition.

Another treatment that seemed to originate from a Frankenstein movie was electroconvulsive therapy. It used electric shock to bring a patient out of deep depression when nothing else worked. It also had the ability to break teeth and sometimes bones as the patient tensed up in response to the current running through the body.

A psychiatrist straddles the two worlds of medical practice. On one hand he is a medical school graduate who is familiar with all body organs and their functions and physical maladies. On the other, he is focused on the workings of the mind. These two facets are diverse, yet intertwined in each human being.

Three facets of psychiatry are mental illness, severe learning disabilities and personality disorder. There has been a change in methods of diagnosing and treating mental disorders, aligning them more closely with physical medical practices.

There was a time when the psychiatrist spent an hour talking to a patient in weekly or monthly therapy sessions. The current trend is for the psychiatric care to consist of prescribing medicine after a short office visit. The psychotherapy is then provided by the psychologist.

Orange County psychiatry is knowledgeable about what disorders require what treatment. The psychiatrist deals with addictions, forensics, neuropsychiatry, cross-cultural and child and adolescent subspecialties. Some focus their practice on one of these and become an authority on it. The mental health of each patient is carefully evaluated and receives appropriate treatment.




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