Clinical psychologists provide talk therapy, while psychiatrists prescribe medication and provide oral therapy. Academic psychiatrists conduct research to find the best ways to help patients, often through clinical trials, and use their expertise to teach and provide continuing education to medical professionals.
Clinical psychologists help patients through talk therapy, while psychiatrists are doctors who are trained to provide oral therapy and prescribe medications to their patients. Therapists use the best knowledge in their field to help people suffering from some type of mental illness or emotional distress. Physicians in the field of academic psychiatry conduct studies and research to find the best ways for therapists to help their patients.
Academics in any discipline seek to advance knowledge in their field. Academic psychiatry professionals are usually required to focus on conducting research instead of using the current body of knowledge in the field to help patients. Since psychiatrists generally make money by seeing patients, psychiatric researchers usually have to work for an institution or university that will pay them and sponsor their research.
Studies to determine the best treatments for different conditions often involve clinical trials to evaluate their effectiveness. Academic psychiatry professionals conduct these studies by giving a study treatment to a group of test subjects, then collecting data that measures how the condition improved or not. The researchers then analyze this data to see if there is statistical evidence that the treatment under study helps the subjects improve. These new treatments could be oral therapies or involve new drugs.
Before physicians in academic psychiatry can conduct clinical trials, they must learn a variety of research methodologies and procedures for using human subjects. This allows researchers to design studies that gather reliable data for analysis and incorporate the necessary protections for its subjects. Tests involving people are governed by strict rules and guidelines in most countries in order to protect human subjects from undue coercion or harm. If researchers breach these protections, not only could they and their sponsoring institution be subject to lawsuits, but any data they collect will be ignored by much of the medical community.
Academic psychiatrists often conduct research on a particular topic, such as treating a condition or using a specific type of therapy. Conducting in-depth research on a narrow range of topics enables these professionals to become experts in these areas. Researchers can use this experience to teach medical students and provide continuing education to practicing psychiatrists. This continuing education can take the form of publishing findings in leading medical journals or speaking at medical conferences. In this way, academic psychiatrists help improve the field of psychiatry by teaching new doctors about the latest research and keeping practicing psychiatrists updated on current findings.
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