Psychiatry is the branch of medicine focused on understanding, diagnosing, and treating mental illnesses and emotional problems. A doctor who specializes in psychiatry is called a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who can both provide therapy and prescribe medications to help people feel better.

Psychiatrists help people struggling with conditions like depression, anxiety, or more serious disorders that affect how someone thinks, feels, or behaves. They might work with a teenager who feels overwhelmingly sad all the time, a soldier dealing with traumatic memories, or someone who hears voices that others don’t hear. Through a combination of conversation, medication, and other treatments, psychiatrists help patients understand what's happening in their minds and find ways to feel healthier.

Modern psychiatry combines this goal with scientific understanding of how the brain works. Psychiatrists study for many years, learning about both the physical brain and human emotions, because mental health involves both body and mind working together.