A Psychiatrist is a medical doctor with specialized training in diagnosing and treating emotional problems and mental illness.

Psychiatrists treat individuals in distress because of various difficulties, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychosis, and some types of behavioral problems, such as those involving self-destructive or violent impulses.

Psychiatrists determine the best treatment plan and can prescribe medication for psychiatric illnesses and other situations requiring medical intervention. Psychotropic medications are useful and appropriate for some conditions. However, they are not necessary in every case. Psychiatrists are trained to deal with the psychological and interpersonal aspects of difficulties, as well as prescription of medication. Often, therapy and/or a change in a life situation is the appropriate intervention and Psychiatrists can refer to psychologists for psychotherapy.

No. Psychiatrists evaluate and treat individuals with a wide range of difficulties. This is true for those who seek out treatment themselves and those who are referred by others.

It’s always important to have a thorough assessment initially so that you can be clear about what the problem is and then plan the treatment that’s going to be right for you. For some people, it’s going to be very important that they take medication and for others, there’s going to be the process of having psychological help to help them manage and come to terms with their difficulties.

When you’re coming for assessment, it’s often helpful to see a Psychiatrist to have a full diagnostic assessment. And then you can develop a treatment plan together, which might well include a combination of psychiatric treatment, meaning medication, and psychological treatment, which should be a talking treatment delivered by a psychologist.

Psychiatric consultation may require one or two sessions to produce a thorough diagnosis and formulation of your difficulties so that we can then draw up a treatment plan for you.

Best outcomes are achieved when you have someone treating you that you have confidence in.

A psychiatric consultation is a meeting to investigate the symptoms, see how long one has been suffering from them and what might have precipitated them. One’s development and the rest of their life is looked into, along with the different factors which might impact how one is today.

A psychiatric consultation is an interview which lasts half an hour. In case one thinks they would require a longer duration to interact, then booking two simultaneous appointments would be recommended (total one-hour duration).

A psychologist has specialist training in giving people talking treatments or psychological therapies. A Psychiatrist is primarily trained to prescribe medications and diagnose psychiatric disorders, although some Psychiatrists can also offer psychological therapies as well.

Successful treatment will mean that you don’t suffer the symptoms anymore and that you don’t need to take medication anymore. That’s the goal with everybody who is assessed and treated.

Medication can be very helpful for a wide range of psychiatric disorders. And one of the best-known examples would be clinical depression. But there are various disorders including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, ADHD, where people can get a great deal of benefit from psychiatric medications.

Psychiatric medication is suited to people with anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia among other many disorders.

Antidepressants are medications used to treat depression. They should help your mood to lift. You should normally take them for at least six weeks to see if they’re having a helpful effect, and you won’t become addicted to them.

If a medication is prescribed for you at Savera, it is carefully selected to be suitable for your needs and it will be checked that you’re responding appropriately to it. The antidepressants prescribed at Savera have very few side effects. Should you develop any difficulties with them, we will manage those, or change the medication when appropriate.

Depression is a disorder of people’s mood where they develop very low mood along with a range of other symptoms such as feeling hopeless, suicidal and biological symptoms (such as loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping and loss of libido).

Bipolar disorder is a condition that affects people’s mood, so that they go into periods of very high mood and periods of very low mood. Such periods can last several weeks or months.

ADHD is a condition where you have marked impulsivity and real difficulty concentrating. In children it manifests as a lot of restlessness. In adults restlessness is not so prominent, and it tends to appear more as risk-taking behavior.

Different treatment options for substance misuse are medical, where you can take a medication to help you manage withdrawal and addiction effects, and psychological, to help you both cope with the cravings and make the changes in your life and the underlying causes that have led you to substance misuse in the first place.

Options for bipolar disorder are mood-stabilizing medications, which people would take consistently to try and stop their mood from going high or low. And then, these are usually supplemented by psychological treatments which help the person manage their disorder.

ADHD tends to improve over time through adult life, but it can have a significant impact on people’s ability to work and hold down a relationship. So, it’s always important, if you think that you’re having difficulties with this, to come and seek assessment and treatment.

Depression is a condition which can come back repeatedly through people’s lives. If that’s happening, then it’s very important to both optimize the medication that you’re taking and get to the root cause of it and stop it becoming so debilitating over somebody’s life.

Some implications of untreated substance misuse are poor physical health, and sometimes people become extremely unwell when they haven’t had treatment for substance misuse. It also has a major impact on one’s ability to function in the world to hold down a job and to maintain a relationship.

One of the key things at managing bipolar disorder is to structure your life in a very consistent way so that you minimize the stresses and you make things very predictable. A good example would be having regular sleep and exercise, watching your diet. Sleep is a particularly important factor in maintaining good health when you have bipolar diagnosis.

People should seek help for their substance misuse when it’s starting to really interfere with their life. For example, they’re devoting a lot of energy to seeking or taking the substance, be it drugs or alcohol, and it’s starting to impact on their relationships and their job.

Often people will have had their ADHD picked up in childhood, but sometimes that’s not the case. If one thinks they have symptoms suggestive of ADHD which are really impacting their lives, then they should seek assessment and treatment for the same.

In case of extreme difficulties with mood, where there are periods of very high mood when one is likely to be losing control- suggestive of hypomania or mania, followed by periods of severe depression which have a major impact on one’s life- would be an important time to seek help.

It’s very important to seek treatment for depression if somebody has a sustained period of low mood which one feels is not manageable on a normal day-to-day basis, despite attempting to do so.