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.
Top reasons to study with us
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.
Professional accreditation
Students
Work placements
You’ll carry out a brief observational placement in a health or social care setting, which can include third sector (charities), industry or the NHS (virtual or in-person). You’ll usually arrange this placement yourself with support from the course team.
Flexible learning
If you’re interested in studying a module from this course, the Postgraduate Certificate or the Postgraduate Diploma then please email Graduate Admissions to discuss your course of study.
Faculty facilities
The Division of Psychology has outstanding laboratory space fitted with high-quality equipment. It has excellent computing infrastructure, and both research and teaching activities are supported by in-house technical staff with computing, programming, electronic and audio-video expertise.
We've invested heavily in research infrastructure, including our own Psychology Kindergarten, which provides an outstanding facility for developmental research and teaching. We also have a brand new Lifespan Lab which is a cross-disciplinary research lab focused on understanding cognition, health and wellbeing from infancy through to old age. Purpose-built laboratory space has also been created to support human electrophysiology research (EEG/ERPs), health research (including GSR and heart rate monitoring), face research (including eye-tracking) and vision research (including stereoscopic displays).
Research overview
In the Research Excellence Framework 2021, we ranked 2nd in Scotland for research impact in Psychology. 100% of our research impact and environment, and 87% of our overall research in Psychology is classed as world leading or internationally excellent.
Our MSc Health Psychology students get involved in our lively community of research excellence.