Psychiatry(pro) versus con's career of choice

I will bold the main points of my argument, and then use evidence and/or reason underneath it. Also, I am going to be using statistics from the United States. I hope this is alright with my opponent. If they require statistics from other countries, I can provide them in the next round if need be. What psychiatrists do would be more important than a freelance writerI would assume as a freelance writer, you would be writing books for entertainment of others. Since you didn't specify it was a textbook writer, or something like that, I believe I can argue that psychiatry is easily more important to society. People have medical needs, and among those include mental health problems. I'll establish the importance of Psychiatry now: 1 in 5 adults in the US at any given time in a year experience a mental illness, and 1 in 5 experience a severe mental disorder at some point in their life[1]. These people need solutions to make them mentally well, psychiatry is one such option which would be needed for people who specifically have a biological, as opposed to a psychological issue causing their mental illness or disorder. Now, compare this to a writer who writes books for the entertainment of people. While entertainment is fairly important, I don't believe it is as important as a person's mental health. I think most people would agree that a health issue is more important to solve than to solve being bored. Psychiatrists earn triple the amount of income of a writerI can't find specific information on a freelance writer, but I don't think their income would be too different from a writer in general. The mean annual earnings of a freelance writer is $60,250[2] whereas the mean annual wage for psychiatrists is $182,700. Now, one possible benefit to a freelance writer is that you don't need as much education to be one. You could probably do it with just a high school education and immediately start work out of high school. A psychiatrist would need 8 additional years of schooling. This is 8 years in which the psychiatrist is likely not earning money. In fact, it is likely a psychiatrist will be in, between, $170,000-$200,000 dollars of debt right out of medical school[4]. During that time a Psychiatrist took to earn a medical degree, the freelance writer will have made $482,000, while the psychiatrist will be about $185,000 in debt. So, in the short term, a freelance writer will be in a better position, this is true, however, let's look at what point the psychiatrist would out-earn the free lance writer. The psychiatrist will have earned $911,200 in 6 years(this subtracts the 185,000 in debt from the total) while at this point in time, the freelance writer would have earned $843,500 after 14 years of working. So, after just 6 years, the psychiatrist will have earned more than a freelance writer did in 14 years. The gap in income earning will just get wider and wider as we go further in life between the two. There is a higher demand for psychiatrists than writers, and is a more stable careerIt is expected that in the next 10 years that the number of jobs in the psychiatry field will grow by 15%, which is much higher than the national average for jobs[3], while for writers, it will grow 2%, lower than the average[2]. This indicates that there is less demand for writers than psychiatrists. Additionally, there is already a large shortage of people who can prescribe mental health medication. 77% of US counties have a severe shortage of prescribers and 96% had at least some sort of shortage[5, pg 1325] Another indicator of how much each one is needed is to compare the unemployment rates of each field. Psychiatrists have a 1.2% unemployment rate[6] while writers, authors, and editors have an unemployment rate of 4.4%[7]All of these comparative facts suggest that Psychiatry is a very stable career, even more so than writing is. If you're someone who likes to do good in the world, psychiatry would be a better optionNow, writing is a good thing, but as I talked about previously, it's not as needed as psychiatry. In psychiatry, you're helping treat patients, and helping them become better. In freelance writing, mostly what you do is entertain. Entertaining is a good thing, but I think most people would agree it's not as good as treating people for illnesses. I can't think of any other reasons why psychiatry should be preferred to freelance writing, but if I do, I'll save it for next round. I'll turn this over to my opponent. Sources:[1] . http://www.nami.org...[2] . https://www.bls.gov...[3] . http://learn.org...[4] . http://doctorly.org...[5] www. oregonhwi. org/resources/documents/countylevelMHshortage. pdf[6] . http://money.usnews.com...[7] . https://www.studentscholarships.org...