The role of a Couples Counselor is rather straightforward. Couples Counselors are absolutely trained psychologists who are specifically tasked with helping couples of all ages lead happy and healthy relationships. In some cases this can mean dealing with serious mental and emotional issues and in other cases in can mean helping couples understand themselves and how they affect each other. Marriage and Family Therapists are very similar to Couples Counselors and their roles are the same.
Personnel Psychology is a branch of Industrial and Organizational Psychology that deals primarily with, you guessed it, personnel issues. These psychologists are responsible for helping identify and treat mental and emotional issues with members of the workforce, but they also deal with helping companies recruit and evaluate personnel to ensure that employees are the right fit for the culture and values of a company. They can deal with everything from company morale to relationship management and everything in between. They are often responsible not just for weeding out potentially troublesome prospective employees but also helping employees be healthy, happy and effective in their roles.
Neuropathologists study diseases that affect the tissue in the nervous system via biopsies and autopsies. They examine tissue from the brain and the spinal cord in order to identify diseases such as Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. They usually work on recently deceased patients and identify dementia and then use those findings to help try and identify those diseases in living patients as well. The idea is to try and identify patterns and trends in the tissue so that other types of doctors can learn effective methods to treat and even cure potential nervous system diseases.
Police Psychologists are responsible for not only helping current police officers with an array issues but also assessing the candidacy of future police officers. They are trained not only as professional psychologists but also as police and public safety experts. It is important for these psychologists to understand the unique issues that affect police and public safety officers as treatment and intervention strategies should be created with those unique issues in mind. These psychologists are tasked with making sure that officers are mentally healthy, ethically responsible and effective in their work.
In many cases, members of the different branches of the United States Military are especially susceptible to mental and physical issues. From PTSD and depression to learning to live an everyday life with debilitating physical ailments, military members can deal with a number of different problems. Military Social Workers are specifically trained to diagnose and treat those problems. These social workers do not need to be members of the military themselves, although many are, but they are charged with helping military members re-enter society and live healthy and productive lives.
Also known as forensic psychologists, these professionals occupy a niche part of the field by helping law enforcement and investigators with important tasks like building psychological profiles, understanding motives, narrowing down potential suspects and examine evidence. They draw upon their psychological studies to understand criminal behavior and actions and help use that understanding to draw inferences and notice patterns in criminality.
