Experience & Training
Dr. Pazdral has been in private practice from 1982 to the present.
Certification
Board Certified in General Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (1984)
Board Certified in Forensic (Legal) Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (1999)
Degrees
BA (with highest honors), The University of Texas at Austin, 1974
MD, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, 1978
JD, The School of Law, University of Texas at Austin, 1988
What is a Psychiatrist?
A psychiatrist is a medical doctor practicing a medical specialty using the full range of medical expertise, including information and concepts from neurology and neuroscience. Psychiatrists coordinate with medical personnel generalists and specialists. Many broadly trained psychiatrists also work in exactly the same emotional change/cognitive modification areas that you may associate with non-medical mental health professionals like therapists, psychologists, social workers, Christian counselors and psychotherapists. Psychiatrist medical professionals originated much of the framework for the first modern conceptualizations of psychotherapy and mental functioning in the early 20th century, then in the mid-century the advent of the first useful medications for mental illness.
Psychiatrists are equipped through training and medical expertise to understand and treat the combined effects of psychology and emotions, brain chemistry, stress, and medical illness on coping and symptoms. Psychiatrists expertly diagnose and manage all mental health treatment needs occurring in normal and disordered functioning in individuals, couples and families.
Like any physician or medical doctor, a psychiatrist has an undergraduate degree from a four-year college, an MD degree from a four-year medical school, followed by one year of general medical hospital internship and three years of specialty training called the psychiatric residency.
During the psychiatric residency, the medical graduate psychiatrist-in-training works with all levels of human difficulty, from counseling with everyday stress problems to treating the most severe types of problems affecting brain and behavior, such as the after effects of brain trauma that has injured or removed parts of the brain. Psychiatric residents also see patients with brain chemistry and neurological disorders, some of which may be chronic or severely advanced. This experience with the most severe conditions usefully and almost surprisingly provides the most in-depth and broad understanding of the less severe conditions and normal personal functioning. From the deep and broad exposure to normal individual functioning all the way to the most severely impaired cases, a psychiatrist develops a fine-tuned and very broad understanding of “what is normal”. This perspective guides and informs the psychiatrist’s entire professional outlook and ongoing continuing education throughout the remainder of his career.
Advantages of Consulting a Psychiatrist
There are advantages in consulting a psychiatrist before pursuing initial counseling, psychotherapy, or any mental health assistance from another mental health practitioner. It is important to find out what is wrong before beginning to treat the problem. What is the diagnosis? What conditions have to be ruled out? For example, if the basic problem were hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, or a pituitary adenoma at the base of the brain, counseling would be ineffective to alleviate the apparent psychological symptoms.