Serious question. Psychology Career interest

[fieryslash]

Psychology has always interested me from the beginning because it is always changing. From my point of view, the more people have sex, the more babies are born with mental illnesses and disorders. I think it is a brilliant idea that a career invested into something that is always being produced in society while making good pay from it and helping others is efficient in the evolution of mankind. The question I have in mind is it difficult to obtain my PhD for doing something that I just completely enjoy? I know it is a bit of a hard question to answer because none of you know me but I really have the urge to major into a difficult career choice. I like to indulge in the work that I do but sometimes I would rather relax and just enjoy myself for a few minutes.

Are there good careers out there for new and upcoming psychologists?
Is there more than one type of psychologist and if there is, what are they?
If it's true that psychology is one of the oldest sciences in the world, could it possibly mean it is the most important and most documented?

--Questions from a curious college student.

 

[Jerry Atrick]

The question I have in mind is it difficult to obtain my PhD for doing something that I just completely enjoy?

I do not have a PhD but am in grad school working towards one. Yes it will be difficult to obtain your PhD, whether you enjoy it or not. PhD's are not supposed to be easy to get otherwise everybody would have one. That being said, if you enjoy what you are doing then all the hard work will be worth it.

I'm sure you will get some insightful responses to your other questions on this forum but don't be afraid to talk to your advisor or a mentor professor about the careers and different types of psychology that are out there.

 

[spaceyourbass]

Google is your friend. There are many branches of psychology...research clinical and experimental psychology. Research education requirements for different positions. You'll find that a Master's is a must, while a PHD/PsyD would give you a huge advantage and more carreer opportunities.

Psychology has always interested me from the beginning because it is always changing. From my point of view, the more people have sex, the more babies are born with mental illnesses and disorders.

It is only logical that as the population grows and more babies are being born, there will more babies with disorders. What you want to pay attention to is the proportion of babies born with mental illnesses and disorders. Look at this ratio:

babies born with disorders and illnesses
total babies born in that time period

Is the ratio higher for 2011 than it was for 2010? Is it higher for 2011 than it was for 2001? If so, what might be causingthe increase in proportion of babies born with disorders and illnesses? Pay attention to the mothers who had the babies. Are they doing more prescription or illicit drugs? Having babies at a younger age?

You need to define your birth defect of interest, population of interest, and time period of interest. Perhaps you want to look at cleft palate births in the USA between 2001-2011. Here's a little info about the causes of cleft lip/cleft palate: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cleft-palate/DS00738/DSECTION=causes . Notice the environmental factors causing the condition: Fetal exposure to cigarette smoke, alcohol, certain medications, illicit drugs and certain viruses have been linked to the development of a cleft. "Certain medications" sticks out at me, because if a pregnant mother was prescribed a drug and told it wouldn't harm her baby, but the drug caused the baby to have cleft lip/palate, then that is terrible and research needs to be done to make sure that pregnant women are not given the drug in the future.

This is all just trying to give you a good idea about what psychology is, as there is already ongoing research on this issue.

Would you prefer to do something like that for your master's/PHD/PsyD, or would you rather go the clinical route? If you think you'd be a good clinical psychologist and you have great people skills, you're in luck, because you can have a great career as a clinical psychologist with only a Master's. I spoke with a clinical psychologist the other day. He has a PHD and makes great money, but he says there are younger guys in his building with only their Master's, who make just as much or more money than he does. He wasn't bitter about it, just pointing out a fact...perhaps trying to sway me away from my persuit of a career in social work.

Psychology is relatively new as a true science. If you say it is "one of the oldest sciences in the world," it can only be in the sense that there were probably caveman therapists. Instead of ignoring the depressed cavemen/women in their family, they helped them through their problems with communication and affection. This helped improve the family's chance of survival. At this point psychology was far from a science, however. Research, research, research. Google is your friend, and so is the Bluelight search feature.

 

[panic in paradise]

check out Synergy Psychology FF.




____________
shoulda coulda woulda, myself
haha

 

[morpher001]

Psychology has always interested me from the beginning because it is always changing. From my point of view, the more people have sex, the more babies are born with mental illnesses and disorders. I think it is a brilliant idea that a career invested into something that is always being produced in society while making good pay from it and helping others is efficient in the evolution of mankind. The question I have in mind is it difficult to obtain my PhD for doing something that I just completely enjoy? I know it is a bit of a hard question to answer because none of you know me but I really have the urge to major into a difficult career choice. I like to indulge in the work that I do but sometimes I would rather relax and just enjoy myself for a few minutes.

Are there good careers out there for new and upcoming psychologists?
Is there more than one type of psychologist and if there is, what are they?
If it's true that psychology is one of the oldest sciences in the world, could it possibly mean it is the most important and most documented?

--Questions from a curious college student.

First decide what line of work you want to be in - then become familiar with the industry and career progression.

Staying in uni until PhD is complete may make it hard to move straight out into practice, being over qualified can be a real disadvantage starting out.

Caveat to that of course is minimum level of education are required to work in different fields in psychology.

Best focus is to get as much vacation/prac work under your belt while you complete the minimum amount of uni study to move into the work force. Once established in the workforce, completing the rest part time isn't too much of an extra burden and it will be of much more value to you, as you are learning with the context of industry experience to add color to the dry facts.

Also, don't forget psychology degrees can be useful for other professions such as HR for instance. Human resources personnel in public practice can be very well paid indeed.

 

[panic in paradise]

First decide what line of work you want to be in - then become familiar with the industry and career progression.

^this.


i was the only one in my class of maybe 30 who had no exact career title choice made...in an introductory class.
lol

 

[double ewe]

First decide what line of work you want to be in - then become familiar with the industry and career progression.

exactly. also, make sure that you know the difference between an interest in psychology and a desire to work in psychology.

i found psych really fascinating, and ended up majoring in it as an undergrad. my school had a great program, and i had a lot of internship/research experience, so i didn't have a lot of trouble finding work. the problem was that i wasn't nearly as well-suited to working in psych as i was to learning about it as an undergrad. i'm not going to bad-mouth the profession, but it just wasn't for me (not enough structure, too much vague/inapplicable research, and not enough return-on-investment in terms of the work it takes to get an advanced degree).

 

[jazz hands]

^ I agree with this. I love reading about psychology and consider myself to have the mind of a psychologist. That said, the actual profession of psychology as it exists today is not for me and I focused my studies elsewhere. I feel psychology is good for me as a hobby and not a profession. I can pursue it at my leisure and never get jaded by the way it is taught/ practiced, which I clearly see would happen if I pursued psychology as a career.

 

[alasdairm]

serious question. why did you put "serious question" in the subject? what made you think we wouldn't think it was a serious question based on the content?

alasdair

 

[rangrz]

One of my close friends, currently a public affairs officer in the CDN Air Force, with a B.Sc in psychology, has decided she wants to be a C.psyche after she is done with playing in the mud occupying a chair. She is persuing her M.Sc at this time and tells me its challenging...which mirrors my exp with my own, un-related M.Sc. I am sure the PhD will be harder still. But that is how it suppose to be, no?

As for job prospects, she says her initial investigation into that lead her to focus on couples therapy and dealing with peoples sexual hang ups. I have no clue about that being valid, but I'd guess there exists a large number of people who'd pay $$ to try and fix their relationship or get over whatever sexually related hang up they have.

 

[maynard29607]

My BS in psychology was a great springboard to human resources, a booming career in managing a department of Belks in the mall, or to grad school. I chose the grad school route and ended up getting a masters in rehabilitation science. I found that psych was a great foundation, but the further I got into it, the more I wanted something more concrete than discussing something as subjective as the human experience.

I now use my psychology degree(with a concentration in gender studies) to assist in dealing with aging populations in a skilled nursing facility. I eventually plan to get into a brain injury unit to work with people who have had life changing disturbances to brain functioning. I feel that working with people to integrate them into the community and give meaning to their life would be the best use of my training/education.

I will admit, I do respect those who chose to go on for a PhD. If that is your goal, I would say onward! By the way you asked your question, I would assume you are early in our studies. Keep on trucking......

 

[grafittibob]

Another psych major here. I'm working on my bachelors now. (Planning on getting a masters and possibly a PhD.) Not sure what I'm planning on doing with it. I'm interested in studying mental disorders though. Schizophrenia, and the like, are pretty fascinating, plus it would be cool to help people out. I don't have very good people skills though. Not that I don't have any social skills, but I'm pretty introverted usually.
But I think being a shrink would be easy enough. "So tell me about_____" *listening* "How does that make you feel?" "Well come back next week and tell me more." haha. Although I'm sure it's not quite that easy.

 

[MonKeYDNA]

To OP, what year are you in college?

From the details of your post, it kind of makes me think you might be interested in sociology or maybe anthropology? But yes, there are many branches of psychology. At my uni, most are going into psych for clinical/counseling. I actually heard this the other day, "I took Neurobiopsych, and I didn't like it... it was too much of a science class and not enough of a psychology class." Personally, I never thought there was a difference -_-

If you want to make money with psych, become a counselor, but only if you have enough resources to do it yourself or with a partner. ALOT of people at my uni complain about bureaucratic problems from counseling for someone else's capital gain.

The cool thing is, most of what we know about neuroscience came from the 80's and 90's, the instruments are getting finer, and technology is exponentially evolving the field (check out optogenetics for example). If you go into the more biological, ground up approach, I think you will have relatively limitless job opportunities.

 

[Titus]

PhD is hard to get. Do you want to provide couseling, do reasearch, what? If it's couseling/therapy I suggest you look into getting a PsyD. It's like a PhD but you don't have to do a disertation. You still get the clinical edu and training.

Psychology IMO is NOT a high paid field. If you have an interest in this and are completlely open I would suggest you consider getting a teaching job at the college level. Decent pay and great benefits.

You could also probably have a part time practice doing counseling and pick and choose the kinds of patients you took on, potentially write books, articles, etc.

I think psychiatrists are the LOWEST paid of all doctors, at least they used to be.

Look at expected carreer growth over the next 20-30 yrs for a wide variety of fields. I have a passion for psychology but there are a lot of damaged people that work in the field and their personal issues spill over into their work, onto their co-workers, their subordinates, even their patients. Administration in the medical and psychological fields sucks ass because gov't has their hands in everything, micro manages things, and does so in an ass backwards way. It's much moreso than other fields b/c payment often comes from insurance and gov't has their hands all over that.

Private practice, if your GOOD (and not just good at counseling, you need to get your name out there and get and keep a client base) can be a good thing. Working in a medical building under an administration is a pain in the ass. You get to listen to your supposedly evolved co-workers while they whine and biotch because their anal retentive or anal explosive lol
And you get to be nagged by control freaks who are in charge of the admin and their micro management of the ever changing billing practices and the way you document for insurance companies- rules and regs that gov't constantly changes for no other reason than to keep themselves in a job, keep changing the rules= they keep being the only one's who actually know the rules and are always in there picking at the records, nit picking, then changing them again for no other reason than to keep themselves employed as 'inspectors' and 'regulators'.

So if it's psychology I say college professor with part time practice with a PsyD (no disrepect to PhD's)

Depends on what's imporant to you.

Money
Benefits
Freedom
Status
Flexibility
Etc...

Some jobs that only require an AA pay higher than a lot of jobs in the field of psychology where people are licensed social workers or similar.

 

[beagleboy]

If it's true that psychology is one of the oldest sciences in the world, could it possibly mean it is the most important and most documented?

Psychology is a psuedoscience. The big book they give patients diagnosises out of, the DSM can be seen being talked about through this link. The man speaking is a Proffessor Emeritus Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj7GmeSAxXo

There are plenty of job duties that a psyche does. He just isnt a practitioner of a real Science.

 

[34-dihydroxyphen]

Psychology is a psuedoscience. The big book they give patients diagnosises out of, the DSM can be seen being talked about through this link. The man speaking is a Proffessor Emeritus Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj7GmeSAxXo

There are plenty of job duties that a psyche does. He just isnt a practitioner of a real Science.

Bit of an extremist there. Also, he is referring more to psychiatry, and psychiatry is abhorrent in the way it places quick, broad-stroked labels on young children.

And yet, many of these behaviors are disorders. Nobody wants to be ADHD and suffer from concentration problems that interfere with their ability to function at levels necessary to attain basic sustenance in our society. Nobody wants to be Bi-Polar or Schizophrenic. There isn't a person in the world who wants to be Clinically Depressed. Are we going to deny that any of these are real ailments simply because psychiatrists drop the diagnosis/medication-hammer too often?

Psychology and psychiatry are both relatively new sciences that come with some very real challenges as far as applying the scientific method is concerned. Yet, behaviors are still observable, and the scientific method still applies. It is an evolving field, and still a very flawed one, but a very legitimate and important field nonetheless. Time will eventually sort out many of the kinks in this field, and I find it impossible to believe that there are still people out there who deny that psychology/psychiatry have not been helpful to our society.

 

[MonKeYDNA]

Psychology is a psuedoscience. The big book they give patients diagnosises out of, the DSM can be seen being talked about through this link. The man speaking is a Proffessor Emeritus Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj7GmeSAxXo

There are plenty of job duties that a psyche does. He just isnt a practitioner of a real Science.

Ehhhhh, woah..... The DSM is just the most agreed upon thing based on data. It's used as a tool to mass-diagnose efficiently.

Psychology is a very important real science. The FACT that cognition/emotions/behavior exist in nature alone makes it able to be studied. And I do believe it IS the most important science out there. We wouldn't know DNA if we didn't know at all. All science is limited by the instruments used to study it. Many people overlook the parts of the person studying a science that go into data acquisition and analysis.

Also, what good is a cure for cancer to someone that is chronically depressed/suicidal and has been since before even acquiring cancer?

Usage of the DSM is what keeps it standardized, and yes it will forever change. It allows psychs to be checked on to make sure they are practicing with ethics in mind.

Edit: For someone to have a mental disorder, it usually requires that their condition gets in the way of daily tasks/responsibilities, it is also up to the individual or someone of the public to report such disorders to the proper official.

As for more convincing content to support the Psych as a Real Science:
This is pretty objective if you ask me.

 

[beagleboy]

^what is that a pic of? Brain scan?

 

[Titus]

Ehhhhh, woah..... The DSM is just the most agreed upon thing based on data. It's used as a tool to mass-diagnose efficiently.

My understanding was that it is a book that is used to explain the disorders/diseases that are being billed for to insurance companies.

There is a great comic offshoot of the DSM, poking fun at all that is wrong with it/the field, called The Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. I HIGHLY recommend everyone who has a dislike towards psychiatry and/or psychology subscribe or get ahold of a few old copies.....as well as everyone who thinks that psychology/psychiatry is invaluable/great/etc. Just getting one copy isn't enough as the made up diseases with the diagnostic criteria they come up with is sort of hit or miss. It's a very small journal so you might get one that just isn't funny. If you get a half dozen you should find at least a few 'disorders' spelled out that having you laughing (as well as enlighten those who take the DSM too seriously as it shows that almost anything can be turned into a disorder.

BTW, psychiatry is responsible for discovering such diseases as 'Drapetomania'- the mental illness that some black slaves had- it caused them to flee their masters. the malady was a consequence of masters who "made themselves too familiar with [slaves], treating them as equals"."If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away." In addition to identifying drapetomania, Cartwright prescribed a remedy. His feeling was that with "proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented." In the case of slaves "sulky and dissatisfied without cause" — a warning sign of imminent flight — Cartwright prescribed "whipping the devil out of them" as a "preventative measure".As a remedy for this "disease," doctors also made running a physical impossibility by prescribing the removal of both big toes.

No joke.

 

[fieryslash]

I'm still going through the process of deciding what profession I would be good at. Looking for a flexible, challenging and most of all a fun career. Knowing how hard and how much money it costs to get into a medical school will eliminate some of my choices. Thinking about one that will be "average" on the scale of difficulty because it's the next step down from the other professions. I am not interested in dedicating myself to years of study because I would like it better to start working early on. Maybe psychology isn't my thing, or maybe it is. Still looking into it. What if dream jobs aren't all worked up to be like they sound. Currently I'm not in school so the answer is I have time to still think.

-fiery