Careers in Psychology

So you've settled on psychology as your major. The harder question is what you actually plan to do once the degree is in hand.

A sluggish economy means more people chasing fewer openings, and that makes it worth your while to look hard at where you're headed and steer toward work that employers genuinely need. If a psychology-related job has ever crossed your mind, you've probably already run into how many directions the field splits off into. The profiles below cover a handful of the options people tend to gravitate toward.

Clinical psychology is one of the broadest. Clinicians often turn up in hospitals and group practices. Some of them help patients cope with physical injury or illness; others focus on emotional difficulties or on helping someone absorb a major change in their life.

A fair number work in physical rehabilitation settings, alongside patients recovering from injuries, disabilities, strokes, or chronic conditions. Others sit with people through loss, say the death of a relative, helping them process the grief. Much of the day goes to one-on-one sessions and to administering tests.

Beyond individual appointments, a clinician might run group sessions, bring in family members, or draw up and carry out plans aimed at changing a patient's behavior. Some team up with physicians and other medical staff to build treatment programs for particular conditions. Some land in universities, where they teach and run studies. Plenty work on initiatives meant to lift the health of a whole community. Because the job sprawls across so many settings, a lot of clinicians narrow in on one specialty.

That might mean coaching someone through quitting cigarettes or holding a healthy weight. Those who work with head-injury or stroke patients are mapping how damage to specific regions of the brain shows up in behavior and mental state. Geropsychologists concentrate on what aging does to the mind. Specialties like these show the field reaching for solid, practical uses tied to particular groups of people. New Mexico has already rolled out a program letting clinical psychologists pick up extra training so they can prescribe medication, and other states may well take the same step before long.

A counselor leans on a mix of tools, among them private sessions and testing, to help people manage ordinary stress and figure out how to live more contented, productive lives. You'll find them in group practices, hospitals, and career or academic guidance centers.

School psychologists spend their days trying to get the most out of students' schooling while keeping behavior problems to a minimum, whether in a single elementary or secondary school or across an entire district. They collaborate with teachers, administrators, and parents on matters like substance abuse and violence, sharpen classroom teaching methods, support better parenting, and sort out the right placements for students who are disabled or gifted. Reviewing school programs, setting guidelines for behavior issues, and shaping how parents get involved can all fall under their remit.

Industrial-organizational psychologists put their training to use inside companies. They're after two things at once: pushing the organization's productivity up and making working life better for the people on the payroll. A good share of their time goes to research on management questions or on what makes marketing work. The rest puts them face to face with people: interviewing applicants, building and leading training programs, advising staff, and digging into how an organization actually runs.