Herbal Health

 AL HEALTHSeveral types of mental health professionals, or providers, are available to help you. Most insurance companies have some type of psychiatric care provision, although the amount of coverage varies based on the policy plan and the credentials of the provider. The most important criterion when choosing a provider is whether you feel you can work well with that person, not how many degrees he or she has.

Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a medical doctor. After obtaining an M.D. degree, a psychiatrist spends up to
12 years studying psychosocial health and disease. As a licensed physician, a psychiatrist can prescribe medications for various mental or emotional problems and may have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Some psychiatrists are affiliated with hospitals, while others are in private practice.

Psychoanalyst
A psychoanalyst is a psychiatrist or a psychologist having special training in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a type of therapy in which a patient is helped to remember early traumas that have blocked personal growth. Facing these traumas helps the patient to resolve the conflicts they have caused and to begin to lead a more productive life.
 Psychologist
A psychologist usually has a Ph.D. degree in counseling or clinical psychology. In addition, many states require licensure. Psychologists are trained in various types of therapy, including behavior and insight therapy. Most are trained to conduct both individual and group counseling sessions. Psychologists may also be trained in certain specialties, such as family counseling, sexual counseling, or counseling related to compulsive behaviors.
Clinical/Psychiatric Social Worker
A social worker has at least a master’s degree in social work (M.S.W.) and two years of experience in a clinical setting. Many states require an examination for accreditation. Some social workers work in clinical settings, whereas others have private practices.

Counselor
The counselor often has a master’s degree in counseling, psychology, educational psychology, or a related human service. Professional societies recommend at least two years of graduate coursework or supervised practice as a minimal requirement. Many counselors are trained to do individual and group counseling. They often specialize in one type of counseling, such as family, marital, relationship, children, drug, divorce, behavioral, or personal counseling.

Psychiatric Nurse Specialist
Although all registered nurses can work in psychiatric settings, some have chosen to continue their education and specialize in psychiatric practice. The psychiatric nurse specialist can be certified by the American Nursing Association in adult, child, or adolescent psychiatric nursing.

Remember that, in most states, anyone can use the title of therapist or counselor. Before you begin treatment, you should consider the credentials of your counselor, your desired outcomes, and the expectations of you and your counselor.
When working with a client, therapists often subscribe to a primary philosophy of treatment based on their educational background and experiential training. Most, however, employ a variety of methods when helping a client, depending on the client’s needs and the therapist’s experiences in the field. Many different types of therapy exist, ranging from individual therapy, which involves one-on-one work between therapist and the client, to group therapy, in which two or more clients meet with a therapist to discuss problems.
*4/177/5*

Sexually transmitted infections are generally spread through some form of intimate sexual contact. Sexual intercourse, oral-genital contact, hand-genital contact, and anal intercourse are the most common modes of transmission. More rarely, pathogens for STIs are transmitted mouth to mouth or, even more infrequently, through contact with fluids from body sores. While each STI is a different infection caused by a different pathogen, all STI pathogens prefer dark, moist places, especially the mucous membranes lining the reproductive organs. Most of these organisms are susceptible to light, excess heat, cold, and dryness, and many die quickly on exposure to air. (The toilet seat is not a likely breeding ground for most bacterial or viral STIs!) Although most STIs are passed on by sexual contact, other kinds of close contact, such as sleeping on the sheets used by someone who has pubic lice, may also cause you to get an STI.
Like other communicable infections, STIs have both pathogen-specific incubation periods and periods of time during which transmission is most likely, called periods of communicability.
*16/277/5*

sherry squeezed in her appointment with me between Catholic Mass, where she was a lector, and the Art Alliance meeting, where she was the secretary. Every minute of her day was filled with activity, and that’s the way she liked it—always helping others, the busier the better. Yet her overscheduled life was crumbling. She could no longer shove aside the horrors that were occurring in her own mind.
Petite and blond, hippie-looking but stylish, in jeans and a shawl, she rushed into my office, yanked her chair up close, leaned in, and took a deep breath. “I’m so scared,” she confided. “I have terrible thoughts. I think of killing people. I think of stabbing my husband and my four year old, Megan. Driving over here I saw a little girl walking home from school, and I had the urge to swerve and hit her. Last night we drove by our old house, and my husband remembered that we still had the key to it. I started thinking: ‘Oh good, we could sneak in at night and stab everybody.’ I’m totally sick.
“Some days I can’t think about anything else,” she said, speaking more rapidly. “No thought is too awful for me. Sometimes I get the idea of gouging my daughter’s eyes out. I used to think about throwing her in the microwave, but she’s too big for that now, thank God. This morning I was shaving my legs in the shower, and I felt like cutting myself, slashing my neck open with a razor. I saw the blood pouring from my neck.”
She leaned back and gave me a glassy look. “God, this sounds so crazy. I don’t want to do these things I think about. At my worst moments, all I hold on to are God and Jesus. When will this hell I’m in end?” She sat quietly, wiping away tears.
I asked gently when these upsetting thoughts had started. Sherry related that she had been tormented by obsessions since age eleven, when, while baby-sitting, she had her first dreadful obsession. She was sitting on the kitchen floor, serenely watching her six-month-old niece rock back and forth in a swing set. Then, by chance, her eyes came to rest on a carving knife lying unsheathed on the kitchen counter. Suddenly, in her imagination, she grabbed it and slashed at the baby. Blood was everywhere. She froze in anguish and guilt. Her life was never the same.
Each night for a week afterward she dreamed that an evil witch had cast a spell on her mind. Finally confiding in her parents, she was taken to a therapist. A year of psychotherapy aimed at uncovering conflicts helped her feel better about herself but did not stop the tormenting images. “Why me?” she thought.
Knife fantasies continued to trouble her throughout junior and senior high school, and new obsessions cropped up as well. She learned to keep herself as busy as possible. As long as she was involved in an activity, the self-tormenting thoughts would usually leave her alone. If, however, she put herself under too much stress, then frightening thoughts would hit hard, like when she tried out for cheerleader and suffered terrifying urges to scream out obscenities at the top of her lungs. She made the team by keeping her teeth clamped together like steel traps; her jaw muscles ached for days afterwards.
In college she majored in art after discovering that her obsessions disappeared when she was fully involved in a creative task such as painting. Yet most hours of the day tormenting, violent thoughts were her secret companions. Thoughts to commit suicide were often on her mind as well. Strangely, these were usually consoling in their effect. “If my awful thoughts get too strong,” she would think, “I can always kill myself before I murder someone else.”
Her worst period ever followed the birth of her daughter. Overwhelmed by almost every awful harm obsession imaginable, including knifing, dropping, scalding, microwaving, and sexually molesting her infant, she developed a state of nervous exhaustion. She couldn’t eat or sleep and finally just stayed in bed, leaving caring for her daughter to others.
A psychiatrist was consulted, and he recommended hospitalization because of the severity of her depression. She refused. “Please God, I’ll make a deal,” she prayed. “I’ll go to the hospital if it gets really bad, but give me the strength to fight the thoughts.” She began to see the doctor for psychotherapy and, with the help of antidepressant medication and the support of her husband, regained the ability to cope.
But four years later, after her husband landed a new job and the family moved to Pennsylvania, her equilibrium was shattered. She was again overwhelmed by OCD.
*2/338/2*