PROFESSIONAL DEMAND

Over time the profession of a psychologist is becoming more and more popular.

Every decade, the number of jobs for psychologists in developed countries is increasing by 20, and in developing countries, such as Armenia, by more than 100%. This growth is especially noticeable in the fields of management, education and clinical psychology; today, there is also high demand for legal psychologists.

Compared to psychologists, the number of social worker jobs has doubled.

If in the past social workers were mainly involved in the sphere of education, over the past decade their number has tripled in areas related to family violence, care for adults, hospitalized, work with convicts, victims of crime, natural disasters, people suffering from various mental disorders, the poor, unemployed, disabled, uneducated, etc.

Aristotle, the author of the first textbook on psychology entitled “On the soul”. considers psychology as a unique field of knowledge, presenting the idea of the indivisibility of the soul and the body. Psychology is a well-developed science with ancient roots which touches upon almost all aspects of our live today and is always in a stage of dynamic development.

The modern world has a demand for a psychologist. In the 21st century each of us is willingly or unwillingly exposed to the influence of the race for scientific and technical development. In the presence of an uncontrolled flow of information a person finds himself in a state of stress.

The main task of a psychologist is to help a person to be in harmony with the world around him, to develop such behavioural mechanisms that will allow him to be more creative in life, to help to reveal psychological resources.

Psychologists try to understand the role of mental processes and social behaviour of an individual, they also study the physiological and neurological processes that underlie cognitive processes and behaviour.

A psychologist helps people who are in a difficult psychological situation, are facing problems at the given moment of their lives, need the correction of their own behaviour or correction of interpersonal relationships, encounter a number of other psychological and psychosomatic problems.

Modern psychology is a system of sciences the goal of which is to study the various aspects and manifestations of the human psyche. That is why the fields of psychology are diverse.

Social psychology is one of the most widely used modern sciences. Knowledge of socio-psychological facts and patterns is necessary not only for psychologists, but also for sociologists, pedagogues, psychiatrists, lawyers, management workers, all those who in their activities are related to the issues of human relations, their motivation and regulation.

One of the useful interdisciplinary fields of psychology is legal psychology which focuses on the activities of law enforcement agencies as well as promotes the administration of justice through various psychological tools.

Political psychology emphasizes political behavioral standards, studies the behaviour of those who play a key role in political life and the psychological factors that influence it.

The place and role of the family in the development of society, the creation and reproduction of its values is well known. Family psychology studies family relations, the peculiarities of their emergence, formation, stabilization and disintegration, describes the family and marital characteristics, social-psychological and functional features of family members relations with each other.

Organizational psychology studies the psychological features of the management process. It is aimed at understanding the individual qualities of the employee, revealing the patterns of interpersonal relations and working group formation.

Introducing the above-mentioned areas, it should be noted that the services provided by unskilled psychologists, social workers, sociologists in various structures of social security and social protection not only do not serve their purpose, but sometimes harm the beneficiaries.

Both in society as a whole and in many state structures there is no clear understanding of the responsibility and importance of the professions of a psychologist, sociologist, social worker in general, and in the transformation of Armenian society, in particular.

One of the main goals of the university was to train specialists who will be able to fully apply their theoretical knowledge in practice. Thus, “Urartu” University of Practical Psychology and Sociology is the only non-state university in Armenia with a practical orientation and a public mission. The aim of the teaching staff of the university is to prepare qualified specialists and citizens endowed with social responsibility, who will be able to raise the prestige of the field of practical psychology and sociology not only in Armenia, but also in the international arena.