With mental disorders being recognized more often, few professions, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, have gained greater importance, as it can be easily seen in cities with the highest demand for psychologists.
It is the job of a psychologist to evaluate the mental health and behavior of their client. According to the American Psychological Association, psychologists should be able to both research and practice as well. In the country, a person must either be able to boast a state license or hold a doctorate in order to be able to call himself a psychologist. Of course, there is an exception to this. School psychologists do not require either a doctorate or a state license as they can simply attain the required accreditation from the relevant educational board instead.
While traditionally psychologists have only been able to analyze patients through therapy, they are now fighting for the right to be able to prescribe psychiatric medicine as well. This has led to the states of New Mexico, Illinois and Louisiana allowing psychologists who pursue further education by taking a psycho-pharmacology course allowing such professionals to prescribe psychiatric medication as well. Speaking about pharmacy, don’t forget to check our article about cities with the highest demand for pharmacists, too.
Due to the number of psychologists being relatively low (around 100,000 psychologists) to other professions such as personal trainers (around 250,000) in the country and the level of education and dedication required, psychologists generally earn handsome salaries.
We’ve tried to determine the cities with the highest demand for psychologists. To determine our rankings, we initially considered the cities that pay the highest salaries to psychologists as high salaries are an indicator of high demand. We also considered the cities that had the most number of jobs for psychologists as the greater the number of jobs, the greater the demand for the profession. All of our data was obtained from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
9. Tacoma, WA Metropolitan Division
Average annual salary in the city: $98,960
Ranking according to salary in the city: 11
Number of jobs in the city: 140
Ranking according to number of jobs in the city: 19
Overall score: 5
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