Psychiatry is a medical specialty dealing with the prevention, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of mental illness.Its primary goal is the relief of mental suffering associated with disorder and improvement of mental well-being.Its primary goal is the relief of mental suffering associated with disorder and improvement of mental well-being.Its primary goal is the relief of mental suffering associated with disorder and improvement of mental well-being.This may be based in hospitals or in the community and patients may be voluntary or involuntary.Psychiatry adopts a medical approach but may take in to account biological, psychological, and social/cultural perspectives.Treatment by medication or, less often, various forms of psychotherapy may be undertaken.Psychiatrists are medical doctors and are certified in treating mental illness using the biomedical approach to mental disorders including the use of medications.Psychiatrists may also go through significant training to conduct psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and/or cognitive behavioral therapy, but it is their medical training that differentiates them from clinical psychologists and other psychotherapists.

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.

Initial psychiatric assessment of a person typically begins with a case history and mental status examination. Physical examinations and psychological tests may be conducted. On occasion, neuroimaging or other neurophysiological techniques are used. Mental disorders are often diagnosed in accordance with clinical concepts listed in diagnostic manuals such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), edited and used by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5) was published in May 2013 which re-organized the larger categories of various diseases and expanded upon the previous edition to include information/insights that are consistent with current research.

Combined treatment with psychiatric medication and psychotherapy has become the most common mode of psychiatric treatment in current practice, but contemporary practice also includes a wide variety of other modalities, e.g., assertive community treatment, community reinforcement, and supported employment. Treatment may be delivered on an inpatient or outpatient basis, depending on the severity of functional impairment or on other aspects of the disorder in question. An inpatient may be treated in a psychiatric hospital. Research within psychiatry as a whole is conducted on an interdisciplinary basis with other professionals, such as epidemiologists, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, or clinical psychologists.