sereneman said:
An interesting so called fact about the head shrink proffesion. Shrinks have the highest rate of suicide of all the careers. I guess listening to other people's problems depresses the shit out of them.
No - the profession with the highest suicide rate is FARMING.
I would imagine that shrinks have a higher suicide rate than other docs though because a lot of people become shrinks due to being ill themselves or having been - skews the stats somewhat.
Anyway, I'm just finishing off a phd in Comp Sci. I would advise you that a PhD is really only worth it if you want to work as an academic or researcher. It's very interesting, BUT in psych the field is very competitive. There's not a lot of research money to go round and there are tons and tons and tons of very bright, capable people who major in psych every year. Don't ask me why it attracts quite so many young bright females, as the career opportunities are not that great. The money in research is not good but the work is very interesting.
If you want to be a counsellor, don't bother with a psych degree, do a counselling course. A lot of the stuff you will study as a psych major is stuff like cognitive theory, things to do with perception, the way the brain works, and very little clinical or abnormal psych, which is what you are interested in. You can do a masters after the degree if you want o practice as a psych in whatever field - clinical, industrial/labour relations, etc.
If you want to be an electrical engineer, go to an engineering school. You have to work hard to get good grades in either major, doing two degrees at the same time would be too much for most.
If you want to be a doctor, go to med school, do a psych internship, and see if you like it. It's a very depressing and underfunded area to work in. I've spent enough time as a patient in various psych wards to know. If you decide you don't like being a doctor, you can go into medical research. Make sure your premed is in a scientific discipline like microbiology or genetics, so you elarn basic scientific research methods. Then if you dorp out of med school, you can either go work as an industrial biologist/chemist, do a phd in your scientific spec (there's LOTS of money in the biological sciences to do research, mainly from Big Pharmacy).
The sad thing about psychology majors is that there are many many mediocre folks out there with a major in psych and you will have to prove every time that you are not one of them. Get into a good school, one where the individual department has a good rep - not just a school with a general good rep - and study hard and get As. Otherwise forget it.
BTW, can you major in psych then go to med school? This could be an interesting combination.
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. Anyone know what specializations are offered in the engineering field (and if there are different types of PhD's I can obtain from it)? I was thinking about going with Robotics, Aerospace, and Electrical since I think that stuff is like the wave of the future.
