How do psychologists differ from psychiatrists?
Psychiatrists are physicians (M.D.’s) who have completed at least four years of postgraduate training. They are the only mental health specialists licensed to prescribe drugs and to give full physical examinations. Psychologists work in some 40 different specialties. They may be experimenters studying rats in mazes or electrical impulses in nerve cells; animal-behavior specialists watching wild chimpanzee; or environmental psychologists observing people in crowded cities. Those who treat mental disorders are called clinical psychologists or psychotherapists. They have Ph.D.’s or the equivalent and have more training in psychological research and personality assessment than M.D.’s. They are trained to help patients with various therapies.
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