Psychology Degree
Are you interested in earning a psychology degree? For many, a psychology degree can help you attain all of your career goals. There are a variety of careers where a psychology degree can be useful, teaching, business, politics, medicine, and the fine arts, to name a few. The reason for this is that a psychology degree prepares you to think critically about people and their environment using the scientific method. In all career choices, you will be working with others, helping and teaching others, supervising or being supervised. It helps to know how people think and feel and how this influences their behavior. Attending a four year institution or a two year community college with a transfer to a university is probably the best way to reach your goal. At the very least a bachelor's degree should be your first goal.
Having a bachelor's degree can be your springboard into continued success in life. You will be able to find employment in a variety of fields, not just psychology. And, it provides you with a great preparation for continued studies should you want to go that route. A psychology degree has the breadth to prepare you for advanced degrees in business, law, medicine, other social sciences, and psychology.
When most people think of psychologist, they are usually thinking of a Clinical Psychologist, a mental health professional trained to assess, diagnose, and treatment mental disorders. A Clinical Psychologist has either a PhD or PsyD and has completed predoctoral and postdoctoral clinical training. They work in schools, universities, hosptials, clinics, private practices, prisons, and government agencies. In order to practice, a psychologist must pass a state licensure exam. A couple of states and the US Army have granted prescription privileges to psychologists and there are movements in many other states to see this happen as well.
There are other doctoral level psychologists that you may not know about who are primarily researchers and teachers. Some of specialties are as follows:
- Social Psychologists - interested in group processes, social perception, group behavior, and social cognition
- Developmental Psychologists - interested in the physiological and psychological development of animals and people.
- Physiological Psychologists - interested in the structural aspects, the biological aspects of the mind. Many of these individuals are brain researchers.
- Animal Behavior Psychologists - interested in the social and physiological aspects of animal behavior
- Cognitive Psychologists - interested in the basic mental processes of thought, intelligence, problem solving, and other analytic skills.
- Organizational Psychologists - interested in business practices and in improving business operations
- Educational Psychologists - interested in working with students, assessing and treating educational delays
- Mathematical Psychologists - interested in generating mathematical and statistical models of the mind
- Health Psychologists - interested in the role of mental health in health settings, works in a supportive role to help treat chronic disease.
- Sports Psychologists - interested in the performance and mental aspects of sports performance