# What is a psychologist? How do they help us? > What is a psychologist? How do they help us? - **Author:** mireia-navarro-vera · **Category:** Adultos - **Published:** 2014-10-11 · **Updated:** 2016-02-15 - **URL:** https://elteuespai.com/en/what-is-a-psychologist-how-do-they-help-us/ - _Translation pending clinical review._ --- ## Why it's hard to understand what a psychologist is Every time someone tells me they don't believe in **psychology**, I remember my father, when, more than 20 years ago, I told him I wanted to study psychology. He didn't understand why I wasn't doing law or teaching like everyone else. A lot of time has passed, until my father finally had an answer when people asked him: - "what does your daughter do for work?", - "my daughter is a psychologist". I don't blame him; twenty years ago, nobody really knew what this thing called psychology was. Nowadays, most people still don't know. Most people wouldn't really know what to answer to the questions: What is a psychologist? Or, How can they help us? Understanding the physical illness of a family member is easy: your brother has diabetes, everyone understands that, but understanding mental illness is harder: - "Your brother has depression" - "What he has is nonsense and too much free time" It's not easy to understand schizophrenia, cyclothymia, depression; it's not even easy to understand anxiety. ## The brain is just another organ The first thing we should be clear about is that feelings, emotions, personality, the planning of daily life,… everything is in the brain, and that the brain is just another organ of our body. It can work well, it can work so-so, or it can work very badly. ### When it works well **When it works well**, you adapt to situations, you overcome crises, you have fun when it's time to, you take responsibility for everything you should take responsibility for, and even though some days are better than others, everything flows and you can say you lead a normal life. ### When it works so-so **When it works so-so**, situations overwhelm you, crises become insurmountable, and it's very hard for you to have fun. Responsibilities feel like a burden and, even though you lead a normal life, it's very hard for you to enjoy it. ### When it works badly **When it works badly**, situations seem absurd to you, your life is a constant crisis, you neither have fun nor can you take on responsibilities, and it's impossible for you to lead a normal life. But the worst of all is that very few people understand it. ## Why mental illness is harder to treat When someone is diabetic, they know they must follow an appropriate diet and, in some cases, take medication. It's simple: if you do what you should, you control the illness. With mental illness it's not so simple. Medication doesn't always work, or it has many side effects, and following a therapy is very hard because you need to change what you've been doing one way your whole life and learn to do it another way. The hardest step is acceptance. When, after a long time without knowing what's wrong with you, you manage to get someone to give you a diagnosis, you only have one option left, which is to accept it. In the years I've spent as a psychologist, I have seen families torn apart by years of misunderstanding, first by the search for a diagnosis that never comes and then for a solution that isn't the one they were hoping for either. It's a path that wears you down and exhausts you. ## So, what is a psychologist and how do they help us? To the question, What is a psychologist? and, How do they help us?, the answer could be: it's the professional who diagnoses a psychological problem, proposes a treatment, and helps the family and the patient themselves understand what is happening to them and how to face it. Another valid answer could also be: it's the professional who, with your help, can provide you with that emotional and psychological well-being you so badly need. It's surely because of this that I chose my profession. I don't like seeing the suffering of others, and mental illness is the one that generates the most suffering. ## Prevention and early detection Unfortunately, there are more and more people with some psychological problem that makes them suffer. There are causes for all tastes: stress, an accelerated pace of life, the loss of family support, new technologies, lack of time to raise children,… Whatever the reason, the truth is that they appear more and more, and earlier and earlier. It never ceases to surprise me to see the increase in children with anxiety coming to the practice, the increase in ADHD diagnoses, the behavioral disorders that disrupt the classroom more and more, overwhelmed teachers and parents… And all of this could have a solution: **the prevention and early detection of psychological problems.** Someday, I'll see Schools for fathers and mothers in every school, talks given by psychologists in every nursery, parent education programs in every town hall; someday, someone will believe, like me, in prevention, and that day we'll see a change in Psychology Centers. Now, when they ask you, what is a psychologist? you can surely give an answer.