How To Become A Forensic Psychologist

Hello! I'm Sherridan Hughes. I'm a career consultant with career analysts. I'm going to talk to you today about how to getting to various careers.

Forensic psychologists are psychologists who are particularly concerned with the criminal mind, and with understanding how deviants work. It's one of the fastest growing fields of psychology. I think it's not exactly what one thinks of in the sense that you know we have all in our mind the books by Paul Britain and who supposedly the inspiration for cracker, and he is obviously tracking criminals and profiling criminals.

Now, there certainly is an element of criminal profiling in forensic psychology. They do look at research and take from that research what they can to identify the sort of people who will likely perpetuate certain crimes. So, they're using statistical evidence and research to inform their advise.

But a lot of it is also about being able to build relationships with quite strange people. So, you'll be working with the police, with the health services, and in prisons with people trying to help them to understand their behavior and understand the implications of their behavior on victims. Before entry, you would actually need to have done a full psychology degree followed by a forensic psychology masters and that would take obviously a 3 year degree and at least 2 years with the masters.

And then you would have to follow a program or a relevant experience in order to be accredited by the health council. So, it's quite a long term course and it is something which you can't do without a degree. You would be again being in sensitive areas would always be easy to work in prisons, but obviously there are things like various youth deviancy organizations and being able to work with young people, with mentally ill people, with victims' support, would be a very useful experience, and in fact, would require experience before being able to secure a place in a such a responsible role.

Obviously in terms of qualities, you need to be able to build empathy, and understanding with people who aren't always very unlikely to be run of the mill, perhaps you know serial killers and really quite evil people. And therefore also you have to be prepared to be in perhaps some danger when you are actually dealing with these kinds of people, and often it's a field which quite difficult to make a difference, but obviously any difference you do make are going to be very rewarding. That's the experience and qualifications which you will need to become a forensic psychologist.