Health Psychology

As a health psychologist, you'll provide valuable insights to a range of activities, and your skills will be highly sought-after in roles across the NHS, in private practice and in the charitable sector. You may be providing psychological assessment and support in acute care situations, managing the psychological care and rehabilitation of people with chronic illnesses, or getting involved in health promotion activities including smoking cessation and dietary management. There are also opportunities, after the MSc Health Psychology, to go on to academic teaching and research positions.

Psychology at UWE Bristol has particular strengths in teaching and research in the area of health psychology, and provides Masters and PhD programmes. The faculty is also home to the world-leading Centre for Appearance Research, the Centre for Health and Clinical Research, and the Centre for Understanding Social Practice as well as the Institute for Sustainability, Health and the Environment. So you'll be among experts whose knowledge and experience feeds directly into the course's taught modules and supporting resources.

The course carries 180 M-Level credits available through seven M-Level modules. You will need to complete all seven to achieve the MSc qualification:

• Health, Stress and Cognition (30 credits) - Learn about health and illness perceptions and how these influence stress and coping behaviours.
• Bio-psychosocial Perspectives on Health (30 credits) - A holistic approach to understanding the pathways of health, disease and disorder.
• Conducting and Evaluating Psychological Research (30 credits) - Gain the skills you need to carry out and evaluate psychological research.
• Dissertation in Psychology (45 credits) - You will carry out a critical literature review and a piece of independent research in an area of health psychology, linking either to current Department expertise and/or to local health care providers.
• Applications and Professional Skills in Health Psychology (30 credits) - The opportunity to design and conduct a behaviour-change exercise and develop your skills as a professional health psychologist.
• Health Psychology In Action (work-based module) (15 credits) - Apply a critical analytic approach to a work placement carried out during the year.

You must have a minimum 2:1 honours degree in Psychology or a closely related discipline. In exceptional circumstances, applicants with substantive relevant work experience or further training and a strong academic background will be considered, however we are unable to accept applicants without an undergraduate degree in psychology or a closely related discipline. Please contact the programme leader if you are unsure whether your academic background is suitable preparation for this programme.

We particularly welcome graduates with appropriate experience in health psychology, and those who have been employed as health or related settings are encouraged to apply. Previous successful applicants have had a wide range of health-related experience including working as nurses, health care assistants, admin in a health setting, health promotion, psychology assistant posts, research assistants, teaching. Newer graduates with an academic background incorporating health psychology with a plan for acquiring health-related work experience alongside the programme are also welcome to apply.

Applicants should be able to demonstrate:

• Some experience with statistics, e.g. T tests, ANOVA, correlation, regression
• An understanding of experimental methods in psychology the scientific method, between subject designs, within subject designs, confounding variables, psychological measurement etc
• An understanding of basic cognitive processes memory, attention, schema
• An understanding of basic psychobiology the stress response, sleep
• An understanding of human learning operant and classical conditioning, social learning theory
• An understanding of depression, anxiety, other psychological disorders