subject: Psychology as a Lucrative Career Option [print this page] Psychology as a Lucrative Career Option Psychology as a Lucrative Career Option
Psychology is that branch of science that deals with human behavior, mental processes and studies human thought process. If you are thinking that with a psychology degree you can only land up with an academic career option of teaching, you are restricting your thoughts. With the growing economy, bustling lifestyle there is an increasing need of stress management and you tend to look for clinical psychologists or counseling psychologists to gather some tips for a stress-free life.
There are different branches of psychology but the one that you wish to choose as a career path will depend on your mental acumen. Broadly, there are two main categories of career options for students who want to pursue psychology. One option that directly involves practice of psychology while the other is the skill learnt in Psychology will be used in other areas such as health, education, customer service, research and many more. Read to know further!
Psychologists need to specialize on a specific area to work on that field:
Clinical Psychology: If you become clinical psychology programs you can find employment opportunities at hospitals, in community service team as well as can become part of mental health team. However, there are a growing number of clinical psychologists who work as self employed individual or others devote life and time in research and doctoral studies.
Educational Psychology: Educational Psychologists deal with problems in education of small children and adolescents. They try to ascertain the emotional status of the kid through observation, discussion and consultation. But to be educational psychologists it is important that individuals need to back their theoretical knowledge with relevant work experience as either a camp counselor, teaching assistant or an educational social worker with some hands-on experience to substantiate your stories with factual data.
Counseling Psychology: This is the most sought after psychologists who help people to deal with varied events of life through the counseling skills. These counseling psychologists work mainly in the sphere of marital relationship problems, in case of asylum seekers as well as people with addiction related issues. A master's degree is the minimum requirement to work in theses areas. To further climb up the career ladder, counseling psychologists enhance their academic qualification by pursuing a doctoral course or work in different projects to hone the skills.counseling psychology programs further segregates into several branches.
Besides these, there are occupational psychologists, forensic psychologists, neuropsychologists and even sports and health psychologists.
Like any other social scientists, psychologists also collect data to validate their hypotheses. The testing methods are varied and unique depending upon individual cases. The information or raw data is mainly gathered by controlled laboratory experiments or by sampling individuals; questioning them and evaluating them on the basis of interviewing, questionnaires, surveys and through aptitude tests.
