MSc Psychology of Mental Health

Overview of course aims

This MSc aims to provide students with the understanding, values, and skills needed to enable them to undertake careers in clinical research or applied clinical settings. It combines theoretical grounding in understanding and treating mental health issues with practical training in clinical assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. Students will focus on common mental health disorders like depression or anxiety, but they will also have the chance to study more severe or complex presentations like eating disorders or psychosis.

Drawing on bio-psycho-social models, students will look at the value and limitations of current treatments for mental health conditions. There is a strong focus on understanding mental health, illness and wellbeing from the perspectives of cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Moreover, the impact of mental health will be examined with contributions from people with lived experience. The importance of patient and public involvement in research and service provision and the importance of the service user/recovery model in mental health will be central to the course.

Overview of content

This MSc consists of six core modules at 20 credits each:

An Introduction to Mental Health - Introduces key mental health issues like depression, anxiety, psychosis, and eating disorders. It will define the key features of each issue, how it impacts on people, it will explore important issues in assessment, management and treatment.
Clinical Practice and Professional Issues - Introduce students to key clinical skills, appropriate for working with adults with mental health conditions, cognitive or learning difficulties in a range of contexts.
Research Design and Statistics - Provides a solid foundation in common study design and statistical techniques used in experimental psychology.
Serious Mental Illness - Offers a balanced and nuanced overview of the different approaches used in the understanding and treatment of what may be termed ‘Serious Mental Illness’ (SMI), namely schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and related conditions.
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Anxiety and Trauma - Covers how threats are processed, both cognitively and neurobiologically, and how threat processing may go awry. A subsidiary aim is to consider how this might change after traumatic experiences.
Clinical Research Methods - Introduces methods that are central to the field of clinical research that are commonly applied to studies of mental health, development and disorders.

Overview of MSc Psychology of Mental Health.

Empirical project (MSc requirement)

Students will undertake a substantial piece of empirical work (including secondary data analysis), on a novel topic at the cutting-edge of research in mental health and/or mental illness, supervised by experts in the field including clinical psychology, eating disorders, trauma, anxiety disorders, psychosis and bipolar disorders. Students will gain an understanding of statistical and analytic techniques used in current mental health research, and carry out their project in a scientifically robust manner. Students will be asked to select four project titles from a list provided by the department. Students will then be allocated a project based on their selections. These projects are usually group based (2 - 4 students per project) but an option to complete an individual project on a separate topic may be possible depending on supervisor availability. Students who wish to do this should discuss their ideas with the department and their potential supervisor. While the summer period is allocated to project work, please note that students will be expected to engage in project work throughout the year, for example arranging for ethical review and developing materials. Exceptional projects may be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Literature survey

The opportunity to work towards a Diploma qualification is offered to students whose work does not reach the standard of a MSc qualification. For these students, a literature review is required in place of an empirical project. The literature review aims to develop Diploma students' ability to critically appraise and write about a specific issue in developmental psychology. Through this assignment, students will demonstrate an ability to think and write about an issue in their chosen field of study in a coherent and insightful way. The literature review takes place during the Summer Term. The 6000 word final essay accounts for 100% of the Literature Review module mark.