In this article let’s take a look at some important reasons why studying psychology is a good career option and worth it for future.
So if you are confused regarding whether you should study psychology and choose it as a career option or not then you should read this article till the end because
I am going to lay down all the important reasons why I believe psychology is a good career option to choose considering all the benefits.
Important note: all the information I present in this article are backed by statistics and data so you can rely on the information provided in this article while deciding whether you should choose psychology as a career option or not.
So without further ado let’s get started.
Table of Contents
9 reasons studying psychology is a good career option & worth it for future?
Good salary
This is one of the main benefits of choosing psychology as a career option.
According to bureau of labour statistics the average salary of psychologist in America is around $82,000 per annum
Whereas in India the average salary of a psychologist is around 500000 rupees per annum
Your average salary will depend upon various factors including your level of education and most psychologists need masters and
PhD degree to get such a high level of salary and your salary will depend upon work experience and your specialisation in psychology.
Because of this reason psychologists rank in the best science job & one of the top 100 best jobs in America according to usnews.
High demand
Another important benefit of choosing psychology as a career option is that it is in high demand career option.
According to bureau of labour statistics the average job growth of psychologist in America is around 8% between 2020 to 2030.
According to American psychological association there are 106000 total psychologists in America and the demand of psychologists growing in America because of growing mental health issues of people (I will provide more information about this point in the third reason)
According to many surveys, there are many psychologists who are looking for jobs so there is a high demand for their service.
For example in the under developing countries like India according to article of money control,
The median number of psychiatrists is only 0.2/100,000 compared to a global median of 3 per 100,000 population, You can clearly see there are less psychiatrist.
Likewise, the numbers for psychologists, social workers are 0.03, 0.03/100000 population which is terrible numbers.
India has 9000 specialists, 2000 mental medical attendants, 1000 clinical therapists, & would require an extra 30,000 specialists, 37,000 mental medical caretakers, 38,000 mental social laborer and 38,000 clinical clinicians.
Even though 150 million individuals in India need treatment for their emotional wellness issues? Under 30 million individuals look for help, this is all a result of absence of clinicians and social shame, mental health is considered a taboo in india.
As indicated by reports from the Indian Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the nation needs around 13,000 specialists.
To accomplish an ideal proportion of therapists to populace is around 1: 8000 to 10,000 however presently has pretty much 3,500 – which is around one specialist of 2 lakh individuals
As per National Crime Records Bureau 2015, the whole psychological wellness labor force, containing clinical specialists, analysts, mental social specialists and mental medical caretakers, remains at 7,000, while the genuine necessity is around 55,000.
All of this data and numbers clearly show that there is a clear demand and supply gap of psychologist and psychiatrist in India.
At the same time you can find 6000 + vacant jobs for psychologist on naukri.com website if you want to become a psychologist in india.
Bright future
Another important benefit of being a psychologist is that it has a wonderful and very bright future.
Before we Understand what will be the future of psychologist, it is very important to know what psychologist actually do,
Psychologists seek to understand and explain thoughts, emotions, feelings, and behaviour. Depending on the topic of study, psychologists use techniques such as observation, assessment, and experimentation to develop theories about the beliefs and feelings that influence a person’s actions.
Now that you actually know the work of what psychologist do let me present you some interesting statistics which will help you understand why I say that psychologists have a bright future.
- A growing percentage of youth in the U.S. live with major depression
- Over half of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment, totaling over 27 million adults in the U.S. who are going untreated.
- Over 60% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment.
Source: MHA
In 2014, an estimated 15.7 million adults in the U.S. — about 6.7 percent of all U.S. adults — had at least one major depressive episode, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
And according to a study of Times of India, 43% of the Indians are in depression especially due to covid pandemic and lockdowns there has been a drastic increase in the mental health issues of the people like anxiety and higher stress levels and
according to economic Times, Among the 15 to 24-year-olds in India, one out of seven often feels depressed or has little interest in doing things.
And the fact is that there are more than 4.5 billion people who are actively using social media whether it is Facebook or Instagram and Snapchat or any other platform and
according to many studies there has been a direct correlation of depression among youth when they use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram for longer period of time due to FOMO feelings.
In such a case psychologists are the best people to get the help because they are trained in that field.
There is a lot of Buzz around artificial intelligence replacing millions of jobs as a matter of fact according to a report of McKinsey at least 800 million jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence by 2030 worldwide.
But when it comes to psychology as a career I don’t think it can get replaced by artificial intelligence.
Let me tell you why.
The very basic work of psychologist is to be empathetic to their patients and understand their problems, feelings and emotions so that they can cure their problems like depression and anxiety and these basic works like being empathetic is not something robot can do.
A lot of people actually believe that many artificial intelligence applications like Woebot, Calm, Simple Habit are helping people maintain a good mental health by themselves.
But the fact of the matter is that the connection and empathy you will get with the real human being cannot be replaced by any means with any tool.
Because of all these reasons psychology is definitely a very Good career for future.
Interesting topic to study with lot’s of specialization to choose
Another good benefit of psychology as a career option is that it is an interesting subject and topics to study and you have lots of different specialisations to choose depending upon your interest and skills like for example,
- Addiction psychology
- Clinical psychology
- Biopsychology
- Cognitive psychology
- Counselling psychology
- Developmental psychology
- Educational psychology
- Environmental psychology
- Forensic psychology
- Psychological psychology
- Sports psychology
- Social psychology
- School psychology
- Health psychology
- Neuropsychology
And many more which you can check it out here along with the definition.
At the same time you can also get into research field and become a research psychologist and learn more about brain, and study the human behaviour, gather information about it and publish lots of white papers because still brain is one of those parts of the body which has not been completely understood by the scientists.
And what’s amazing about Psychology as a subject is that if you have passion towards sports or environment then you can choose psychology specialisation in that particular branch like environmental psychology or
sports psychology or if you like to work and have passion towards small children and small age people then you can choose developmental psychology as your specialisation.
Learn more about people & Meet new people
Another benefit of psychology is that you can learn more about people and meet new people everyday.
Because your profession deals with understanding people’s thoughts feelings, ideas, experiences so that you can cure their mental health issues.
If you ever wanted to know why people behave in certain manner Or maybe you’ve always wanted to learn more about your own mind, emotions, and actions.
Getting a degree in psychology is the best thing you can do to understand people at the same time you will be meeting new people every day with your job whether it is in hospital or in a clinic and
because of that you will learn new things from your patients like their thoughts, experiences they have gone through which will increase your mindset and broaden your beliefs and obviously you can also increase your network with your customers because of that
if you are a people oriented person and extrovert and like to talk to new people every day then psychology can be a good career option to choose because you will be meeting new people of different kind whether it is married couple or individuals and top company CEO or Teenage students.
And because you will be meeting new people and learning new problems of the people it can be both exciting and challenging career for you everyday because every other patient will be different from each other like one patient can be understanding and patient and the other one would be totally different.
Wide career options
Another great benefit of being a psychologist is that you can have wide career options.
The fact is that if you learn psychology, you can get a job in different options apart from being a psychologist like,
- You can get a job in management and business like human resource manager
- You can get a job in marketing and advertising
- You can get a job in sales and retail
- You can also get a job in social services
- You can also get a job and work as a career coach and guide the students, give them a right direction in their life depending upon their interest & skills
- You can also get into the field of research and become research assistant and research analyst
- You can also get a job in private counselling firm
- You can also become a teacher and professor in a particular University for psychology subject
Around 64% of the 1.3 million people with a bachelor’s in psychology say that their degree is directly related to their current career.
This is what makes psychology a good subject to choose because you can have different career options apart from being a psychologist as you will be learning the behaviour of the people which can lead you lots of different career options
because at the end of the day every business is about managing people and driving them to do some action like purchasing a product and service.
Gain lots of useful skills
Another interesting benefit of psychology as a career is that you can learn lots of useful skills.
Because you will be meeting new people every day you can gain lots of communication skills and networking skills and if you start your own private practice like a clinic then you can also learn negotiation skills with your customers.
At the same time if you get into marketing and Advertising field you can learn Complex problem solving skills and marketing skills like digital marketing which can be very useful skills to learn.
At the same time during your psychology studies you will have to do a lot of research and understand brain and learn how to interpret analyse and organise data and information which is totally different skill set altogether.
Job satisfaction
Another important benefit of psychology as a career option is that you can have high job satisfaction compared to other career options.
According to a report of World Health Organisation
Depression is a common illness worldwide, with an estimated 3.8% of the population affected, including 5.0% among adults and 5.7% among adults older than 60 years. Approximately 280 million people in the world have depression
At its worst, depression can lead to suicide. Over 700000 people die due to suicide every year. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in 15-29-year-olds.
Depression and suicide are linked, with an estimate that up to 60% of people who commit suicide have major depression.
But it’s important to note that this figure doesn’t mean most people with depression will attempt suicide.
Research suggests that the majority of suicides are related to a psychiatric condition, including depression, substance use disorders, and psychosis.
You should know that still in many countries like India talking about things like depression and mental health issues is not something which people like to discuss openly in the society and is considered a social Taboo so majority of the patients don’t really discuss their problems and
face the challenges of depression by themselves but as a psychologist you can cure the patient & you can save the life of someone who is depressed and looking forward to suicide.
Did you know that approximately 150 million people in India need therapy for their mental health disorders? Yet, less than 30 million people seek help
In most cases psychologist will play a huge role in transforming the life of their patients and giving them the new hope, light & life which can be highly satisfying job and It can bring you a lot of happiness as a human at the end of the day.
Become self employed & startup
Another big benefit of choosing psychology as a career is that you can enjoy the flexible working hours and you can also become self employed or you can also start your own startup.
According to bureau of labour statistics more than 27% of the psychologists in America are self employed workers.
At the same time you can also start your own clinic so that you can treat your patients At the same time you can also schedule your own working hours if you start your own clinic so that you can spend time with
your family members but there are going to be some initial challenges and problems when you start your own clinic like billing issues, finding and managing clients but the problems will get sorted out when you increase your team and get more experience working in the field.
the best benefit of starting your own startup which is a clinic is that you can earn unlimited money because you are your own Boss and you can both manage your time and money yourself &
some psychologist who work in hospital have some control over their working hours like clinical psychologists depending upon their experience and because of having the control of working hours will open up many amazing benefits in your life after you become psychologist.
Even though there are some disadvantages of being a psychologist like you can have mental fatigue, compassion fatigue and it can also be very stressful because of constantly interacting with new people and
understanding their problems and those experiences sometimes can interfere in your personal life and hurt you then as well and in most cases you will have to spend more than 7 years of time to study and get a PhD degree before you can become a psychologist and
start treating your patients and if you can’t afford the education of psychology sometimes you have to take student loans to pay for the education from the top university.
But there are more benefit compared to the disadvantages and if you truly love the subject of psychology and really like to help people get a solution to the problem which are not openly discussed then psychology as a career is a wonderful choice because it has both money and demand and above all happiness.
With that said let’s end the article.
Conclusion
These are all the important things you need to know about whether psychology is a good career option or not for the future.
Do comment down whether you like psychology as a subject or not in the comment section below.
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