The meaning, if any of a dream seems to be highly specific for the dreamer. People often wonder and sometimes ask if they are normal. The difficulty here is that, strange as it may seem, the mental health professions have never established or concurred in a definition of normalcy. There is reasonable though not complete agreement today concerning various abnormal states of mind and behavior - but any discussion of normalcy itself quickly becomes controversial. A far more productive line of inquiry, therefore, is to ask whether one is happy and healthy, not whether he is normal.
Psychiatry is a specialty of medicine like surgery, internal medicine or pediatrics.
Psychologists have obtained the Doctor of Philosophy or PhD degree from a university and have not received but have not received the medical training of a physician. Although experience shows that some types of chronic or recurrent depression and other conditions do best with longer rather than shorter treatment, no one really knows for sure in an individual case whether medication will be required indefinitely. New medications and treatments are constantly being developed that will almost certainly transform our approach to psychiatric disorders in the next few decades. The important thing is to maintain good communication with the prescribing physician and to make decisions about length of medication use after thorough discussion. A not uncommon scenario is relapse of depression or other symptoms when medication is discontinued prematurely and without medical guidance.