Pharmacotherapy

Pharmacotherapy - Fancy Word For Medications

First, let's make sure we are all on the same page.

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that deals with how the brain's neurotransmitters are related to mood and behavior. A psychiatrist will be primarily interested in how to combat these disruptions in brain function with psychotropic agents in the form of medications.

Psychology is the discipline related to how a person's thoughts cause actionable responses in mood and behavior. In psychology, we use different teaching methods in an attempt to bring about life satisfaction through powerful techniques unrelated to pharmacotherapy, but rather through the recognition that we have the capacity for the discipline to make change possible.

So a psychiatrist will prescribe medication, while a counselor or therapist will not. A counselor or therapist will use psychotherapy to bring about change. While there are some psychiatrists who do integrate psychotherapy into their practice, it is usually not their specialty and these types of psychiatrists are rare.

So psychiatry and psychology act as a team, and the research consistently shows that when this teamwork is properly carried out, it will give our clients the best possible chance at recovery.

For Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia, medications are key to mitigating the symptomalogy. Psychotherapy should also be employed to help the client's mood, and to help maintain adherence to their medication regiment. But the primary source of intervention should be through adherence to the medications prescribed.

For Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and many of the other mood and adjustment disorders, the key intervention should be psychotherapy. A good counselor can show a client ways of thinking that if done properly, can in many instances, have just as much of an organic effect on the brain as medications would. Though medications can help in the early going to help "take the edge off," their use should be minimized, and a client should never become dependent on pills to make them feel happy.

Certainly, depression and inorganic mood disorders should not be exclusively treated with medications.

Pursuit of Happiness is a counseling clinic, and does not currently employ psychiatrists, though we have great relationships with many area psychiatrists and should the need arise, we are happy to refer our clients to them.

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