MSc Health Psychology

Overview

Health psychology is the study of psychological and behavioural processes in health, illness, and healthcare. It is concerned with understanding how psychological, behavioural, and cultural factors contribute to physical health and illness.

Health Psychologists promote healthier lifestyles. They try to find ways to encourage people to improve their health and also to improve the healthcare system as a whole. For example, helping people to lose weight or stop smoking, or advising doctors on better ways to communicate with their patients.

You’ll learn to use your knowledge of psychology to promote general wellbeing and understand physical illness. We will teach you the skills needed to help people deal with the psychological and emotional aspects of health and illness, and to support people who are chronically ill.

Our MSc Health Psychology has a strong experiential focus and emphasises the application of health psychology to real world settings. The course includes contributions from healthcare practitioners. You will carry out a brief placement in a healthcare setting, which can include the NHS, third sector (charities) or industry, and you’ll usually arrange this placement yourself with support from the course team. You are encouraged to carry out research in healthcare contexts where possible.

This Masters in Health Psychology is designed to meet the British Psychological Society’s requirements for Stage One training towards professional Health Psychologist status. Through formal teaching and practical experience, you’ll acquire relevant skills and core competencies as a basis for professional training in health psychology (Stage Two) or other applications of psychology to health issues. Students can also exit with PGCert and PGDip awards.

Teaching

We combine formal teaching, workshops and practical experience of health psychology applications.

Where possible, each of the course modules will include teaching input from practitioners working with individuals or groups, either in a research or service delivery context.

All members of the course team are readily accessible to students and will provide you with a flexible, individualised and engaging training experience that meets your needs. The modules are delivered in seminars which include lectures, workshops and practical/experiential sessions. Teaching is scheduled to take place on 2 full days per week (currently Monday and Tuesday) to allow for work commitments. However, it is important to emphasise that this is a full-time course with the workload (eg reading, course work, research project) and time commitment required for a full-time postgraduate course.