At Pasadena Neuropsychiatry, our area of practice is focused heavily on neuropsychiatry, an emerging field within psychiatry that is also clustered under the umbrella of “Interventional Psychiatry.” Through this focus, we help our patients through a variety of treatments, such as MMD and OCD TMS Pasadena. As a clinic, we also hold a focus on the area of HIV Psychiatry, which comprises the bulk of Dr. Sepah’s patient demographic. Neuropsychiatry, Interventional Psychiatry, and HIV Psychiatry all fall under one medical specialty, Psychiatry, governed by the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology.

As there are some similarities, “psychiatry” and “psychology” are sometimes confused or used interchangeably. However, there are significant differences between the two. While psychiatrists learn a great deal of psychology, including the five main talk therapy modalities while in their residency, psychiatry differs in that its foundation is the practice of medicine – as such, the answer to “what is psychiatry?” is that it includes both a medical perspective and treatment. To become a psychiatrist, one is required to attend four years of medical school following four years of an undergraduate degree, which is typically in the sciences.

All psychiatrists must complete a basic medical internship, which is followed by a minimum of three years of a hospital-based residency program. This adds up to around 35k hours of hands-on training and experience. In order to practice, all psychiatrists must acquire a medical license as physicians from the Medical Board. To qualify for this, they must pass the same three steps of the USMLE exams as other physicians in the country and successfully complete a medical internship.