Why pick a psychiatrist with more experience?

Psychiatrists come to us after four years in medical school and four years in specialized training. But the most important training occurs after graduation. Psychiatrists can work primarily in the hospital, an outpatient setting, or other situations that can deepen their understanding in specific areas.

Let’s say a psychiatrist has specialized in working in a chemical dependency clinic. They know about how addictions work and how they worsen other things like depression and anxiety. This psychiatrist might also be specialized in knowing about the different psychological issues that contribute to addiction.

But if you have attention deficit disorder, he might shy away from prescribing stimulants for you because of his past experience. He may have patients who have lied to him in order to get those stimulants. That’s why reading in the online reviews you can see patient’s experiences and see if you can read online reviews of people who have had experiences that you would like to have.

On the other hand, what if you have some addictions? Maybe your are smoking dope or drinking too much alcohol and you try to cut back and can’t. This person might be able uniquely to help you with that. And that goes way beyond just prescribing a medicine. The psychiatrist might guide you to new thinking that can save your mental health. I go over stories about this happening in my book, “Prescription For Positivity,” available on Amazon.

So all psychiatrists have lots of experience. In their training after medical school, they received lectures in many different areas. They received lectures about brain science, neurologic issues, psychotherapy, and how medication works. They worked in hospitals in inpatient settings, as well as providing consultations to other areas of the hospital, such as intensive care units, where patients also need psychiatric help for issues such as depression.

So, psychiatrists in their training have worked in many different settings and talked with many different physicians and psychotherapists to get a well-rounded education on how to provide counseling and medication in many different settings.

Then, after graduation, they are often hired to work in a hospital or clinic. A new patient can ask a psychiatrist, “Where have you worked before?“ You can get a sense for their previous experience.

Basically, after four years, a psychiatrist in training has seen 99% of all the different kinds of issues, and he will work on them in the coming years. He in general, knows how to do the counseling and medication to help with them.

The deeper level of experience of a psychiatrist, however, can help a patient get to the heart of their issues more quickly. If they have kept up with the latest in medical science, they can prescribe the treatments that will work the fastest.

A psychiatrist with more than five years experience can start talking about, “There are three good treatments for what you’re going through, but based on my experience, there is one treatment that works better than all the rest most of the time, and that’s what I recommend now.“

When a doctor can talk like that, with the command of knowing what other patients have responded well to through the years, that can inspire a patient to accept that approach and work hard to follow through on a certain treatment plan.

Let’s say the main problem is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and panic. The best course of action, the doctor says, is to take prazodin to calm down nightmares at night, and sertraline for the anxiety and depression during the day. He then recommends a daily meditation regimen to practice self-acceptance. This takes 10 minutes a day. Then, five minutes each night, with an evening meditation, will be used again to practice self-acceptance. A patient may not feel very excited to be changing their routine. They may not like the idea of taking medicine. But with the promise of getting rid of the panic and PTSD, the patient may give it a try for a month. Then, once the patient sees they are feeling better rested, getting better grades in school, and feeling a deeper sense of acceptance instead of self-judgment, the patient may continue this work. Initially, believing in the psychiatrist, based on their years of experience with similar people and similar situations, really paid off.