Mental Health: Cultural Psychology and Psychiatry PGDip

This programme is designed to improve your understanding of the impact of socio-cultural factors on mental health, mental illness and mental health care disciplines and delivery. It will enable you to work in a research or mental health care role in a multicultural setting both here in the UK and abroad as well as put you in a position to pursue further training to qualify as a therapist, social worker or clinical psychologist.

You will examine how cultural factors such as belief systems, values, ethnicity, practices and traditions can affect an individual’s mental health risk – and their resilience. You’ll also look at how migration, race and other cultural phenomena intersect to create mental health challenges and how these can be addressed in direct clinical practice and mental health care systems through the implementation of innovative therapies as well as the adaptation of current psychological approaches and care pathways.

You’ll organise and complete a supervised placement with a mental health service or organisation that provides support to a diverse range of people (eg the NHS, a third sector organisation or a global mental health and development agency). Clinical placements will give you experience of supervised practice and will develop your ability to work with emotional, behavioural and psychological distress within and across different cultural contexts. An organisational/policy focused placement will give you the opportunity to observe and engage in the cultural processes that shape how mental health services are structured and delivered.

In addition, you’ll develop your research skills and complete a research project.

Please note this programme does not equip you to be registered as a psychotherapist in the UK, for which you must pursue additional advanced training.

If you complete 60 credits you’ll be accredited for exit with a PgCert Applied Mental Health.

Additional costs

You may have to pay for travel to placements.

The skills this programme gives you are valuable for work in:

• psychiatric or psychological services
• homelessness agencies
• learning disabilities services or forensic services
• third sector organisations serving refugees and migrants
• NGOs
• and legal services.

We’ll help you prepare your CV, work on interview technique, and develop some clinical skills if you want to consider more advanced and accredited courses.

The course has allowed practicing clinicians to develop their own practice with culturally diverse populations and to implement cultural competency programmes in their services.  

Students who have completed this course have gone on to:

• pursue research doctorates in clinical psychology
• assistant psychologist roles within the NHS and third sector
• research assistant roles.