Psychologists are paid listeners. Very often, people who have a hell inside their mind keep it to themselves. Friends and family want to be supportive by trying to get you to focus on positive thoughts, but no body wants to listen to your worries and problems and drown with you, and frankly most people are concerned about their own pleasure foremost.

A psychologist acts as a nonjudgmental person in which you can vent even your darkest thoughts, which you may be afraid of sharing with your family and friends for fear of alienating them. For me personally, if I said what was truly on my mind, my friends and family might not be my friends and family any more. Bound by confidentiality, the psychologist acts as a well for you to have a cathartic release and empty your mind of it's garbage. They don't pertain to have solutions, since you probably know what they are.

Psychiatrists are also MD's who can prescribe medication. There main focus is treating the symptoms. They can diagnose your psychological issues, place it in a category and prescribe for you medication, which in some cases can be a life saver, and make you better able to use some of the behavior modification techniques you can get from reading, common sense or counseling. It basically opens a small window where you can see a ray of daylight amidst the cloud of your thoughts to view a glimpse of reality.

If the depression and/or anxiety is serious enough, a two-pronged approach of counseling and psychiatric supervised medication is probably necessary since major depression can kill. A psychiatrist saved me from being hopelessly suicidal in my late teens when he told me I was merely sick and there were treatments for it. Right there it verified that I was not my sickness, but it was separate from me. When I realized this was not my natural state, I decided I should continue living.