How lucrative is being a psychiatrist or mental health professional in Japan in Psycho-Pass?

Question

In our society, psychiatrists are among the lowest paid physicians/medical doctors/medical researchers/medical professionals. (see Note 1)

• The Best- And Worst-Paying Jobs For Doctors

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However, in Japanese society in Psycho-Pass, mental health is anything but swept under the rug, so in Japanese society in Psycho-Pass:

1. How lucrative is being a psychiatrist relative to other medical professions? (Well you could answer in absolute amounts, but...)

2. How lucrative is being a psychiatrist relative to other professions? How about a mental health professional relative to other professions?

Feel free to spoil the figures if any and even the context. I'm expecting some kind of twist to reveal that MHPs are actually paid much higher or much lower than public perception. Or you could just give the public perception of the figures then put the true figures in spoilers or something.

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Elaboration:

1. I'm not sure I saw a figure in season 1 (haven't seen past that), but

2. based on the existence of Sybil system and all that, I'm guessing it takes a lot of mental health expertise to maintain.

3. Even though Sybil is...

...made up of brains of people with ASPD or something (well technically those who can't be read by Sybil system...or something),

I don't see how mental health expertise isn't as highly valued in other aspects.

4. People want to keep psycho-pass levels low right?

5. It's not like there's some

additional

conspiracy about manipulating psycho-passes.

Even if there was a

n additional

conspiracy, how would you do that without mental health expertise right?

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Note 1: of course ceteris paribus: I'm adjusting for things like country, experience, etc so with sufficiently high probability, a psychiatrist will earn less than a non-psychiatrist doctor assuming they're both in the same state and have the same amount of experience

Answer 1

SEVERAL SPOILERS ALERT

I don't know how to answer this question, honestly, but I think at least I can put forward some ideas. From here, please feel free to elaborate, refute, agree or disagree. My idea is that there is a wide demand for psychological and psychiatric services in the psycho pass universe. It is observed that in the second season

they confirmed how much the pharmaceutical industry profits in this universe, with the investment in remedies for the "control of the psycho pass".

However, when we speak of psychological services, we are not referring to the prescription of remedies, but the use of therapies to deal with problems of psychological order / origin (at least this is where I live, but how a psychologist acts tends to vary widely in several countries). This leads me to reflect a few things: in the psycho pass universe, most people, with a few exceptions

(akane, Makishima, and the enforces possibly),

would tend to live with the fear that their psycho pass may be overcast, so investment in therapy and remedies would tend to be more accepted and even encouraged. From this, it could be concluded that the profession in Japan of psycho pass would be much more valued and, consequently, much better paid than it is today. Now, I do not know how to estimate values, since I have no idea of ​​current values, but it can be assumed that I would be in a top 10 occupations well payed. HOWEVER, there are some other facts that make me think that, although well paid, the profession might not have so many interested parties. My argument is based on the character of

Saiga Jouji. Formed in psychology, he is supposedly responsible for making people's psycho pass up just by talking

and this probably has a very simple explanation:

people are not prepared to do what he says.

Fear of stress

(which is actually the fear of clouding the psycho pass)

causes people to avoid exposing themselves to stressful situations

(some, as shown in the anime, until they become lethargic / vegetative)

and because of that they would be ill prepared to cope with stressful situations. Now think: how will you be a therapist or psychologist if you do not know how to handle it? Your job is to listen to your patient about your fears and problems, and lead him to clarify these issues, the best possible way. Well, to summarize everything I think, my answer would be: yes, it would be a very well paid profession (because it is necessary), but I do not think there would be a lot of people wanting to be a psychologist. More than that, even if the system selects people who have the profile to be psychologists, there would be few people who could actually be. By the way, the second season opens an interesting question. In this world, would people tend to bet more on remedies than on psychological treatment? Therapy presupposes that you would have to face certain things it's hard for you to handle yourself, but doing so, at least temporarily,

the meter of your psycho pass could rise.

Anyway, that's what I think. For any mistakes, please indicate that I will try to fix it!