Public Health

As health-compromising behaviours contribute to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in many countries including the UK, understanding and changing health behaviours is increasingly important for health and social care in a wide variety of NHS services, in other public sector services, and in private and charitable services. This programme has been designed according to the requirements of the British Psychological Society and the Health Professions Council, to ensure the skills acquired are relevant to contemporary health care.

The MSc Psychology and Health is for you if you are a graduate, especially if you currently practice in health and social care and want to increase your psychological knowledge and skills.

In Health Psychology, psychological principles are used to research and promote changes in people’s attitudes, behaviour and thinking about health and illness. The breadth of the discipline is far-reaching, and includes: prevention of health-compromising behaviours; encouraging health-protective behaviours; modelling health-related cognitions as predictors of health behaviours; researching health-care delivery and practitioner communication; understanding the psychological effects of illness and disease.

The MSc is studied full-time over one year starting in September and comprises two semesters of taught modules followed by an individual research project.

The knowledge and skills acquired are of relevance not only to careers in health psychology, but also to other careers in psychology, such as clinical psychology, and in other professions in health and social care, including mental health and the management of wellbeing and illness.

Learning takes place in lectures, seminars, laboratories, via directed personal study and during a placement, as well as during the design, conduct, analysis and write-up of an empirical research project.

As well as acquiring knowledge of health psychology, on this programme you learn how to do health-related research, understand the nature of evidence-based practice in health psychology, develop the knowledge and skills underpinning professional practice as a psychologist, including the ability to reflect on practice and knowing how to practice ethically and confidentially. There will also be the opportunity for you to increase your experience of and skills regarding working with people and health and social care organisations..

Core modules

• • Design and Statistics
• • Empirical Dissertation: the design, planning, conduct, analysis and write-up of a piece of psychological research relevant to health
• • Health-related Behaviours
• • Professional Practice and Communication Skills
• • Social and Organisational Contexts of Health and Illness

Optional modules

The following modules are optional. You may elect to choose other appropriate modules from the wide range of postgraduate modules available at Hull

• • Health Psychology in Practice: in-depth study of a specific topic including placement
• • Understandings of Health: qualitative and quantitative methods and the philosophies underlying them

This MSc provides Psychology graduates with a structured career pathway towards becoming a Chartered Health Psychologist.

The mixture of applied and practical learning and experience provides a solid basis for developing careers in psychology, or elsewhere in the health and social care sector, where the psychology of health is coming to play a pivotal role.

This MSc has been developed by the Department of Psychology in partnership with the Department of Clinical Psychology to ensure the utmost relevance to future service needs.

We have excellent links with local health and social care services and will offer and support a wide variety of placements for students.

The Department of Psychology is well placed to support cognitive and neuropsychology research related to health.

You should have, or expect to obtain, a 2:2 Honours degree. Your education or previous experience should include substantial psychological content. You should also have a minimum of 30 hours of paid or voluntary work experience relevant to the content of the programme. If you have a BPS-accredited degree, or you have obtained BPS Graduate Basis for Registration by the Special Case route, you should consider MSc Health Psychology, which confers a Stage 1 qualification in Health Psychology. Stage 1 is not conferred by MSc Psychology and Health.We welcome psychology graduates from other countries who do not necessarily seek to become UK chartered psychologists.International students (language requirements) If your first language is not English, you will be required to provide acceptable evidence of your English language proficiency. English Language Requirements IELTS band: 6 IMPORTANT NOTE: Since April 2014 the ETS tests (including TOEFL and TOEIC) are no longer accepted for Tier 4 visa applications to the United Kingdom. The university might still accept these tests to admit you to the university, but if you require a Tier 4 visa to enter the UK and begin your degree programme, these tests will not be sufficient to obtain your Visa. The IELTS test is most widely accepted by universities and is also accepted for Tier 4 visas to the UK- learn more.