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 healthcare providers 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 have long-term conditions.

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

This Masters in Health Psychology is designed to meet the British Psychological Society’s requirements for Stage 1 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.

Course objectives

This accredited course aims to provide the first part (Stage 1) of postgraduate training in Health Psychology, in accordance with the BPS requirements, by:

• Enabling students to understand and critically appraise the theoretical basis of Health Psychology, including psychological models and methods applicable to the study and understanding of health and health care issues.
• Enabling students to critically evaluate the application of Health Psychology approaches to practice, policy and research in health service or related settings.
• Making students aware of the unique contribution psychology can make to the understanding of health, illness and health care issues, within a multidisciplinary framework.
• Enabling students to formulate, design and carry out their own empirical research project to a publishable standard.

Students will acquire relevant skills and core competencies via formal teaching and practical experience of Health Psychology applications, which will provide a basis for continuing into professional training in Health Psychology (Stage 2) or other applications of psychology to health issues.