If you want to say which major sounds the most profound and seems to have super powers, it must be psychology.
As soon as I heard that others were studying psychology, their words and deeds became restrained, and I was afraid that I would be seen through if I said one more word. As if facing a psychologist, our mortal hearts are always "streaking".
In the imagination of outsiders, learning psychology is so glamorous.
However, only one knows the psychological well-being. More than twenty years ago, psychology was called "sunrise specialty in the 21st century", but the sunrise has not yet risen.
Psychologists, trapped in employment
Every year when the college entrance examination volunteers, there are always candidates who want to fill in psychology with great enthusiasm and curiosity, but they are always dissuaded by many experienced people. They cry out "Run" with regret:
Quit! Quit! Quit! Really don’t choose psychology for a temporary interest! Love can’t be a meal after graduation.
It is an indisputable fact that psychology is difficult to find a job. According to Max’s employment report, applied psychology has been on the list of "red card majors" for five consecutive years [1].
According to the Catalogue of Undergraduate Majors in Colleges and Universities issued by the Ministry of Education, psychology majors are divided into psychology and applied psychology [2].
The difference between these two majors is that one is the basic research field, which pays attention to the research of traditional psychological theory, and the other is the applied research field, which is related to the application of psychology in human resources, user research, industrial psychology, psychological counseling and other fields.
However, applied psychology, which tends to solve problems in practical situations, has a low professional counterpart rate after graduation.
According to the "2013-2017 National Employment Big Data Report for Graduates Majoring in Applied Psychology", only 6.5% of psychology graduates are engaged in psychological counseling with higher relevance to their professional learning content, and more than 70% of them are engaged in human resources, of which more than 30% are positions with low demand for professional skills such as assistants and administrators [3].
The whereabouts of the graduates of the Department of Psychology of Beijing Normal University in 2022 also showed that, except for further studies, 33.3% of them were employed by educational institutions, medical institutions or party and government organs, among which 21.4% entered primary and secondary schools, and 70% of the employed enterprises were non-medical enterprises [4].
Studying psychology is not only difficult to find a job, but also difficult to find a job with high salary. Low income is another reason to dissuade students from choosing psychology.
According to Michaels data, the average monthly income of undergraduate students majoring in psychology in 2022 is 5169 yuan, which is not only lower than the average income of undergraduate students in China, but also the lowest in China [1].
The income of psychological counselors who seem to have higher professional barriers is not as high as expected.
According to the Investigation Report on the Occupational Status and Mental Health of Psychological Counsellors in 2022 issued by Chinese Academy of Sciences, the average monthly income of psychological counselors is 4,546 yuan, and the distribution is very uneven [5]. Only a few people can have considerable income.
Similar to doctors, psychological counselors are also a career with heavy qualifications. The longer they are employed, the more experienced they are, and the more popular they are. However, in the early stage of their employment, their income is not high.
At the same time, under the supervision system, psychological counselors have to bear an indispensable fee-that is, the supervision fee paid for obtaining professional counseling and guidance.
It’s difficult to get a job, it’s difficult to get a job, and the income is still low. Let alone help others solve their worries. Psychologists are afraid that they have to take care of their mental health first.
Psychology is still in the rising sun.
In this way, psychology is not a good place at all.
But at the same time, psychology is a sunrise major that has been called for more than 20 years. The reason for calling it Chaoyang major is simple: broad prospects and great demand for talents.
Indeed, there is a real demand in China for psychological counseling and therapy practitioners with psychological background.
In 2019, the results of a mental health survey in China organized by Professor Huang Yueqin from Peking University Sixth Hospital were published in The Lancet Psychiatry. The survey found that the weighted lifetime prevalence rate of various mental disorders (excluding dementia) among adults in China was 16.6% [6].
In other words, there are 230 million people in China who may suffer from mental disorders at some time in their lives.
Among them, anxiety disorder and depression disorder have the highest prevalence rates, 7.6% and 6.8% respectively [6].
In addition, according to the study "Global Disease Burden in 2019" jointly conducted by WHO and the American Institute of Health Indicators and Evaluation, the number of people with mental disorders in China increased by 27.53 million from 1990 to 2019, reaching about 160 million in 2019 [7].
Not only patients with mental disorders, but also ordinary people may face troubles at all stages of their lives and need the support of psychological counseling services.
For example, in a psychological counseling service platform, users aged 20-29 mainly consult mental health, love psychology, personal growth and emotional management, while users aged 40-49 mainly consult marriage and family and parenting education [8].
The fast-paced social operation has brought a series of "products" to modern people’s lives: endless 996 and involution, which are "hunted down" by ddl after DDL every day from the moment they open their eyes, which makes it difficult for modern people to relax. There are more and more people with mental health problems, but the number of talents who can provide mental health services is far from enough.
At present, there are only about 20,000 undergraduate psychology graduates, 8,000 to 10,000 master students, and only over 400 doctoral students [9].
As for employees, it is naturally even more scarce. According to the Mental Health Map 2020 released by the World Health Organization, there will be an average of 13 mental health and mental health practitioners for every 100,000 people in the world in 2020.
In China, there are only 8.6 mental health and mental health practitioners per 100,000 people, which is only about 60% of the world average.
The data in the United States reached 145.8 per 100,000 people in 2017, which is not surprising. After all, when we watch American TV series, we can often see the scenes in which the characters go for psychological counseling. Many people’s cognition of the image of psychological counselors also comes from this.
In 2020, Japan and South Korea, both East Asian countries, will be 13 times and 5 times higher than China in this index [10].
Generally speaking, the psychological counseling industry in China has a bright future, so why is psychology still a red card major and the sunrise of psychological counseling industry has never risen?
Why does the morning sun never rise?
Although the demand of psychological counseling industry is large, the existing psychological counseling services do not meet people’s needs well.
Many people who have had counseling experience have confided that the experience of psychological counseling service is poor on social platforms. We have counted the related complaints of counselors about psychological counseling in social platforms, and the word "lightning protection and pit avoidance" has been mentioned the most frequently.
For example, some people share that their psychological state is worse after psychological counseling, and the consultants they meet are not professional, and even reveal the privacy of the consultants, such as telling relatives and friends about the counseling content of the visitors.
The quality of school psychological counseling is a long story. Many counselors are part-time counselors or ideological and political teachers. Encountering unprofessional can make students’ psychological situation worse:
Going to counseling is like going to the office to be questioned.
The poor evaluation of the psychological counseling industry is partly due to the chaos in the industry-the psychological counseling industry lacks unified industry standards and service norms, and the level of psychological counselors is also uneven [11].
In China, if you want to get the qualification as a psychological counselor, you just need to attend a crash course for a long time, and there is no professional restriction [12]. Although the national second-and third-level psychological counselor certificate examination was cancelled in 2017, the obtained certificates are still valid, and about 2 million people obtained certificates from 2005 to 2017 [12].
On the other hand, most Chinese did not actually have the habit of doing psychological counseling when they were troubled.
The "2022 National Health Insight Report" released by Dr. Lilac shows that more than half of the people have heard of psychological testing and counseling, but only 5% of them have done offline psychological counseling [13].
Even people with mental illness are not used to asking for help.
In 2021, a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry showed that only 9.5% of patients who had had depressive episodes in the past year sought treatment from health service institutions, and even fewer people were adequately treated, only 0.5% [14].
The research points out that the low penetration rate of mental health services in China is an important reason why Chinese is not used to seeking psychological help [14]. The low popularization rate makes Chinese lack of knowledge of psychology, and many people have psychological problems and don’t realize that they can go to a psychological counselor for help.
On the other hand, when there are psychological problems, they will be ashamed to admit it, and think that it is shameful to do psychological counseling, even if they are anxious again, they would rather hold it back. This is actually a manifestation of "shame". In the eyes of the outside world, mental illness is an ideological problem, and patients are always required to cheer themselves up. Compared with other diseases, such as cancer, the stigma of mental illness is more obvious [15].
Therefore, psychotherapy, an "exotic product", has no obvious effect on Chinese. Some people even joked that Chinese’s fortune-telling was enough, and he didn’t need psychological counseling. For example, when consulting emotional problems, no matter how many "obedience tests" psychological counselors analyze, there is no fortune-telling "the other person can help you".
Psychologists who have studied hard for many years have never thought that their biggest competitor in the future will be fortune telling.
The scientific nature of this article has been reviewed by Wu Liqing, Master of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, Queen’s University.
References:
[1] MyCOS Research Institute. (2023). 2023 China Undergraduate Employment Report.
[2] Ministry of Education. (2023). 2022 Record and approval results of undergraduate majors in ordinary colleges and universities. Retrieved 10 July 2023 from http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A08/moe _ 1034/S4930/202304/T20230419 _
[3] Volunteer 360. (2018). 2013-2017 National Employment Big Data Report of Applied Psychology Graduates.
[4] Department of Psychology, Beijing Normal University. (2022). Report on the Employment Quality of the Class of 2022 (as of August). Retrieved 10 July 2023 from https://brain.bnu.edu.cn/yjspy/xsgz/d859 Dadd0A854E909C6C509F83521044
[5] Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. (2023). China National Mental Health Development Report (2021-2022).
[6] Huang et al. (2019). Prevalence of mental disorders in China: a cross-sectional epidemiological study. The Lancet Psychiatry 6(3) 211-224.
[7] IHME. (2019). Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 GBD.
[8] One Psychology. (2020). 2019 China Psychological Counseling Industry Crowd Insight Report.
[9] Zhou Xiaolin. (2020). On the development of psychology in China from the perspective of fighting the COVID-19 epidemic. Science and Technology Herald 38(10) 54-55.
[10] World Health Organization. (2021). Mental Health ATLAS 2020. Retrieved 14 July 2023 from https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240036703.
[11] Zhao Xudong Cong & Zhang Daolong. (2005). Problems and suggestions in the professional development of psychological counseling and therapy. chinese mental health journal 19(3) 221-225.
[12] China Youth Daily. (2022). "Family education instructors" need to be "guided". Retrieved 18 July 2023 from http://zqb.cyol.com/html/2022-11/02/NW.d110000 zgqnb _ 2022102.
[13] Dr. Lilac. (2022). 2022 National Health Insight Report.
[14] Lu J. Xu X. Huang Y. et al. (2021). Prevalence of depressive disorders and treatment in China: a cross-sectional epidemiological study. The Lancet Psychiatry 8(11) 981-990.
[15] Yu Junhan & Xiao Zeping. (2005). Psychodynamic analysis and countermeasures of stigma of mental illness. Shanghai Psychiatry 17(6) 353-355.
