Eventually, things changed. A small group of psychiatrists started noticing dynamics within families that were linked to mental health disorders, and they began to realize that not all mental health issues were due to brain abnormalities. From that grew the field of psychology, which focused on understanding human behavior and what made human beings "tick." Those individuals dedicated their time, not to studying the layers of the brain and what went wrong in the gray matter, but to understanding how we, as people, relate to each other and the world around us, as well as how we develop issues with substance abuse, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and all the other ailments we commonly struggle with.

Those professionals are also doctoral-level therapists (PhD and PsyD) and are called psychologists. They have more intensive and expansive training than licensed mental health therapists (LMHC), social workers, and marriage and family therapists (MFT), who are usually Master’s level providers. However, they don’t spend their time learning about the biology of the brain to earn their doctorates; instead, they focus on the needs and feelings of being human, the emotions, thought patterns, and behaviors we engage in, and how to heal them.

Psychologists study how people learn to think and why they react to their lives in the ways that they do, providing answers to why we get angry, sad, worried, or engage in problematic behaviors like using drugs, alcohol, or cheating on our spouses. Psychiatrists, who are trained as medical doctors, in contrast, explore what goes on in the physiology of the brain. They examine chemical imbalances and brain abnormalities.

They approach depression and anxiety from the perspective of how brain chemicals may be out of balance and can be adjusted with medications to help people overcome their issues, rather than focusing on how someone has learned to think about themselves and the world around them, which could have contributed to the struggles they face. The benefits of a psychiatrist usually come into play when someone is struggling so much with daily functioning that even attending therapy or handling basic daily tasks becomes extremely

difficult.

At our clinic, it’s typically at those times that we recommend a client explore supplementing their talk therapy with medications. This way, they can still address the root causes of their issues holistically while being able to function at a daily level in the meantime. Many people come to us feeling that they don’t want to be on medications or don’t feel like themselves while on them, but are afraid to stop taking them. We work with those individuals to help them identify and heal the root issues so they don’t need to rely on medications to feel good and function, and we collaborate with the prescribing psychiatrist to facilitate that transition.

Ultimately, we believe it’s important to have an informed understanding of the options available

and to discuss what is best for you so you can thrive in your life!