Psychiatry(pro) versus clinical psychology

General rebuttal to opponent's argument:I would argue that psychology and psychiatry are about equal in terms of finding out the cause of and treating mental illness. Psychiatrists, when they think there is not a biological cause of a patient's mental illness, will recommend psychologists to go to, or else offer to attempt therapy themselves. Both a psychologist and a psychiatrist do attempt to find out the causes of mental illness, it's just that a psychiatrist may first attempt medication in order to rule out the possible biological causes of the mental illness. Once the biological causes are ruled out, then they think it must be psychological causes. Likewise, a psychologist will attempt psycho-therapy first, and if that is not helping the patient, they may begin to conclude that there is a biological, not a psychological problem that the patient has and will then recommend psychiatrists in the area, or else if they live in one of those three aforementione states, they will prescribe medication themselves. If you ask me, it is potentially harmful to attempt giving medication to someone, when their mental health problem is something psychological, not biological, as well as when their mental health problem is something biological but you attempt therapy. There are potential side effects of medication which would be the downside of giving that to a person who actually has a psychological problem rather than a biological one, and therapy could be absolutely useless to a person if their problem is biological and within that time could have dangerous problems from having to go through their mental illness for an extended period of time. While someone could argue experimenting with medication is worse because not only is there potential side effects, but also you're not treating the problem if the problem is something psychological, it can still treat the problem through placebo, as my opponent pointed out. Even if they are being treated through placebo, at least it still gets rid of the mental health problems, and thus the problem I pointed out with therapy allowing the problem to continue to exist because it's something biological, would still be there. The fact both are problems is a problem with both fields. If there was some better way to gauge whether someone has a biological versus a psychological problem causing their mental illness, that would be much better to use. However, I don't know of a means of gauging the problem like that. The only way, I suppose, would be to take a MRI scan of the patient's brain in order to see if something biological is causing the mental illness. If it's not, then you can conclude that it is likely something psychological. The problem is, MRI scans are expensive usually, as much as $2,200, and somehow this place can get it as low as $575[7], but that's still a good amount of money. I also don't think insurance companies would cover the cost of an MRI scan just for this reason, otherwise I'm sure people would be getting MRI scans when they have a mental illness. So, really, there is no way to know from the beginning whether the patient has a psychological problem or a biological problem that is causing their mental illness. This is sort of a guess that both psychologists and psychiatrists have to make, and it's an unfortunate fact about both fields. Oh, and a side note, it would also be more difficult to tell what mental illness someone has, even with an MRI scan, if they have multiple mental illnesses. While an MRI scan could tell you that someone has some problem with the brain, it can't tell you what specific mental illness the person has. I suppose that's where the psychiatrist and psychologist would come in, they would of course give a person some sort of mental health examination, and their responses to that exam can be used to help determine what mental illness(es) they have. Still, the MRI scan would be able to determine if the mental illness is due to biological/neurological reasons or psychological reasons, even if the patient has multiple mental illnesses.Specific rebuttals to opponent's arguments:I'll quote from my opponent in italics of the many types of clinical applications of therapies CBT is more of the renowned way of treating clients. a study done by Simon, Cord"s, and Bottino found that CBT is more effective at treating adults with depressionI just wanted to point out that the study my opponent refers to, which an abstract of it can be found here[8] is specifically comparing CBT to other types of therapy. It is not a comparison of CBT with medication. In other words, this point of argument doesn't seem to indicate that psychologists are better at treating mental health problems than psychiatrists, since psychiatrists use medication to treat mental health problems. As I pointed out above, to be honest, there is guesswork going on for both psychologists and psychiatrists. The bottom line is, this doesn't establish that psychology would be better than psychiatry. It should be noted that for depression and panic disorders(and likely each mental illness) medication and psychotherapy are approximately as effective as one another, which these two studies show[9][10]. Now, there is one potential point that could help my opponent, which in many studies comparing anti-depressants and CBT, CBT usually results in better after-treatment effects.[11] In other words, when someone used medication and someone used CBT, someone who used CBT is less likely to experience a return of the mental disorder. However, there is one problem with these studies, which is that the medicaons used in the trials were older medications which are more likely to have averse side effects than modern medications.[11] This can result in people quitting early from the medication because they don't want to deal with the side effects of older medications. the article looked at how many patients who have been prescribed a medication may be given an inappropriate medication or one that does not even work properly for their specific illness. "I would say at least half the folks who are being treated with antidepressants aren't benefiting from the active pharmacological effects of the drugs themselves but from a placebo effect," says Steven Hollon, PhD, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University who has conducted extensive research on the effectiveness of antidepressants. First, I would like to point out that my opponent quoted a psychology professor. Given that they are a psychology professor, they may have a bias in favor of psychological treatment of individuals instead of psychiatric treatment of individuals. Additionally, they would not be the most qualified to answer the question, as would say a doctor or psychiatrist. Granted, a psychiatrist could have bias in the opposite way, where they favor medications over psychotherapy, but they would be more knowledgeable on the subject of medication since they deal with medication and went to medical school. Another group of people who would be knowledgeable on this topic, maybe moreso, would be pharmacists. In a study conducted by pharmacists, medical school students, and the center for pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, where they conducted a study of several mental health hospitals and their prescriptions, there was only a 6.3% prescribing error rate among the medications[12] Additionally, this other study also found that between 2% and 12% of hospital admissions in the UK received an error in their medication[13]. While this is a problem, I don't believe it's as large as my opponent has stated where half of the time they receive a medication that is not doing anything for them and is a placebo. Again, the psychology professor they quoted wasn't offering a specific study on the matter and could have bias. RE: psychologists are more fit for performing therapy than a psychiatristI agree with this, so I suppose it would still be necessary for psychologists to exist still. Nonetheless, it is still possible for a psychiatrist to perform therapy if they so chose to do so, so there is a little more flexibility in becoming a psychiatrist than a psychologist. A psychiatrist, usually, would have a bachelor's in psychology just like a psychologist, and I believe that is what makes them at qualified minimally to offer some level of therapy. Sources:[7] https://www.saveonmedical.com...[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [10] http://jamanetwork.com...[11] https://pro.psychcentral.com...[12] http://bmjopen.bmj.com...[13] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...