SCOPE AND OPPORTUNITIES

“Contrary to the popular notion, Psychology is not being led by hunches, and nor it is common sense”. Psychology is a science that investigates human and animal behavior, and the mental and physiological processes associated with behaviour. The properly trained Psychologist is a scientist, or at least a practitioner who uses scientific methods and information resulting from scientific investigation. The following are some of the specialized areas in Psychology. To apply for most of the following positions, Masters Degree in Applied Psychology is the basic qualification.

Clinical Psychologists: study and apply psychology for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development.

Educational Psychologists: study of how humans learn in educational settings, especially schools, and the effectiveness of educational interventions.

Forensic Psychologist: are concerned with clinical analysis of a particular individual and an assessment of some specific psycho-legal question.

Legal Psychologists: are concerned with application of psychological principles, methods or understanding of legal questions or issues. Legal psychology also includes academic or empirical research on topics involving the relationship of law to human mental processes and behavior.

Health Psychologists: are concerned with understanding how biology, behavior and social context influence health and illness. They work alongside other medical professionals in clinical settings, although many also teach and conduct research.

Industrial and Organizational Psychologist: focuses to varying degrees on the psychology of the workforce, customer and consumer, including issues such as the psychology of recruitment, selecting employees from an applicant pool which overall includes training, performance appraisal, job satisfaction, work behaviour, stress at work and management. Career counselling is another aspect of counselling which comes under industrial/organizational psychology.

Occupational Health Psychologist: is concerned with identifying psycho-social characteristics of workplaces that give rise to health-related problems in people who work. The field is a combination of health psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, and occupational health.

School Psychologist: Applies principles of clinical psychology and educational psychology to the diagnosis and treatment of students’ behavioural and learning problems.

Sports Psychologist: Seeks to understand psychological/mental factors that affect performance in sports, physical activity and exercise and apply these to enhance individual and team performance. It deals with increasing performance by managing emotions and minimizing the psychological effects of injury and poor performance.