Distance or Regular: Some Probabilistic Thoughts

There has been a great debate brewing in my LinkedIn feed regarding how Psychologists are trained in India and whether one mode of instruction is superior to the other. While I think most of the things that needed to be said have already been covered before, I will try and do something I enjoy doing (sometimes problematically so) - include some probabilities in our conversation to see whether we are fooling ourselves.

I expect this article to be long so here is an overview of the things I will talk about in case you would like a map before we go on this journey together.

• Competence, Probabilities and Instruction
• The Bubble-ness of LinkedIn
• The Potential for Regulations
• Making a Long Table

Competence, Instructions and Probabilities

I have been reading quite a bit of what everyone is trying to say. There is obviously a lot of black and white thinking going on. After all, as humans we are prone to imposing simplicity on complex topics.

This simplicity may be in terms of "anyone who has done their degree in distance mode is not fit to be a practicing psychologist" or its opposite, "Since some people who did their studies in distance mode ended up being as competent or more competent than regular mode learners, distance degrees are equivalent to regular ones"

That's not how the world works. I think there are two maxims that any reasonable person reading this would agree with

1. All students who have just graduated from a regular master's degree do not share the same degree of competence
2. All students who have just graduated from a distance master's degree do not share the same degree of competence.

This means that there is a distribution of competence that exists in both the populations, regular or distance master's in Psychology. The debate is ultimately about how these two probability distributions overlap.

Now this where the normal probability curve can help us introduce more nuance into how we think about this problem. While there is no data on the competence of Indian Psychology Master's graduates, I will have to revert to the safest assumption that the competence is normally distributed. Most graduates are average, some are extremely poor, some are excellent.

Evidence from foreign countries suggests that this distribution is actually positively skewed wherein majority of the therapists are below average and only a select few are excellent but I am not sure we can impose that finding on India as well without any data. So let's go with our friend NPC for now.

The issue is more complicated than having just two sides but for the sake of the argument, I will go to the extreme lengths to create two sides of the argument and showcase their arugments.

These are the two sides of the argument pushed to the extreme. I don't believe anyone is arguing for the two images listed above. Most people, I assume, believe that there is some overlap and some difference in the competence of the two, we just don't know how much.

Based on my experiences, this is how the distribution looks. The average distance graduate is handicapped than the average regular student but the top 5-10% of these students are as good, if not better, than the top 5-10% of the regular graduates.

But the conversation doesn't end here. Something we keep missing out on is how much of a silo all these conversations are happening in.

The Silo of LinkedIn

While internet penetration has increased greatly since 2016, LinkedIn still only accounts for about 8.4% of the whole population of India. That means below 10% of the people in India are on LinkedIn. Even fewer than them are actually active here. I wouldn't be surprised if that number generalizes to the psychologist population as well.

Most psychologists are not on LinkedIn.

This brings me to the second point of discussion - the invisible therapist.

There is almost a 100% certainty that there are people offering counseling/therapy services in India without having any presence on social media.

We don't know whether these people practice ethically or not, we don't know if they have proper training or not. We basically know nothing about them.

The conversations we are having on LinkedIn are not the view of the majority because we simply don't know what the majority thinks or is. They won't even see any of the things we talk about here. It would be myopic to believe that any one view is the "majority" one.

I am also afraid that these invisible therapists make up for a majority of therapists in India. Most of them practicing as counseling psychologists.

These invisible therapists: a mixture of regular and distance graduates are practicing in complete silence and we simply don't know what they are doing or how they are doing it, whether ethical standards are being upheld or not. We know nothing about them. It is these invisible therapists that are the major cause of concern for me, whether they are distance or regular trained.

It is this silent majority that scares me.

In such situations, regulations would help a lot. But we don't have them for counselling psychologists. But what if some regulations come in the next 5 years? What happens then?

The Potential for Regulations

The NCAHP Bill recognized counselling psychologists as people who have a regular master's in Psychology. While the guidelines have not been adopted yet, what happens if they are? Do we tell the people who had done their degrees from distance learning years ago that their work is illegal now?

It would be unfair to apply rules retrospectively. If a new rule is introduced, it should be applied from when it was adopted. Not from the past. We cannot know we are breaking some guidelines if they don't exist right now.

In such a situation there are two ways out:-

1. National Exam to practice as a Counseling Psychologist irrespective of mode of instruction. We could have one exam that you need to clear. A standardized test to separate the wheat from the chaff.
2. A bridge course for people who had distance education in the past but now want to be recognized as a counseling psychologist. (after the adoption of NCAHP)

I think we all recognize that regulations are important. It is also important that if the regulations leave some people out, that they are given options to enter the ambit of the regulations as well.

But until those regulations come in, we will have to treat each counseling psychologist individually - judge them on their own merits, understand their shortcomings individually. It is this extra work that worries us and makes us sometimes lash out at people.

Building a Long Table

Now that we are finally having these conversations, I think we should not stop having them. These issues are grey. There is no black and white but that doesn't mean we cannot discuss the greyness, bring our own perspectives and build a mutual understanding.

Criticism and conversations are a good thing. We need more of them. If we are agreeing with each other all the time or simply ignoring each other when we are not, it doesn't bode well for us. As peaceful as it would be to keep our eyes wide shut, our mouths closed and our ears covered, it would only lead to degradation in the longer run.

I decided to write this article because the topic requires nuance. Something that can be missing in an Instagram story or a solitary post. I have known some exceptional people who are or have done their Master's in a distance mode but I also know that perspectives or policies cannot be made with the exceptional in mind but the averages.

Let's talk more. Let's have more data. Let's be more grounded.

Best,

Arjun