Subject overview

Programme outline

The Postgraduate Diploma in Psychological Therapy offers modular professional training, providing successful graduates with all the requirements to apply for professional accreditation as a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist with the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP).

This degree includes flexible options. Every other week, you attend two or three full days of teaching at the University and you may wish to stay in Brighton & Hove during these teaching days. Some supervision will be delivered by telephone or Skype and does not require you to be at the University.

The degree is offered in partnership between the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together a top-rated academic institution with a world-leading research profile in applied psychology and an NHS trust that is a teaching trust of Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS).

We offer two pathways through this degree:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Common Mental Health Problems: this pathway is designed to serve the needs of mental health practitioners wanting to train as cognitive behavioural therapists within the area of common mental health problems (anxiety and depression) in outpatient services
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Complex Difficulties: this pathway is designed to serve the needs of mental health practitioners who will work primarily with more severe, enduring and complex presentations of mental health problems, in either outpatient or inpatient services.

After successful completion of the PGDip, you may wish to complete an additional Masters component. The Masters qualification will equip you with the skills to undertake practice-based research of relevance to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Entry requirements

UK entrance requirements

Students entering at the start of the course should possess (i) and (ii) with either (iii) or (iv), plus (v):

(i) A Core Profession qualification in a mental health field as defined by the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies or evidence of being able to complete the BABCP Knowledge Skills and Attitudes requirements within one year of the start of the course;

and

(ii) Foundation level knowledge of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and some experience of providing structured psychological therapies or interventions;

and either

(iii) A first- or second-class undergraduate honours degree or equivalent

or

(iv) The ability to study successfully at postgraduate level, demonstrated through a portfolio of evidence of previous written work produced in a training or work context;

plus

(v) Ready access to suitable clients (clients with common mental health presentations of anxiety and depression for our Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Common Mental Health Problems pathway, clients with complex difficulties for our Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Complex Difficulties pathway). Note that clinical placements may be available with the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to complete the practice element.

In order to be accepted on the course you must also pass an interview.

Overseas entrance requirements

Please refer to column A on the Overseas qualifications.

If you have any questions about your qualifications after consulting our overseas qualifications table, contact the University.
E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk

Related programme

• Childhood and Youth Studies MA

Fees and funding

Fees

Home UK/EU students: £8,800¹
Overseas students: £12,300²

¹ The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
² The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.

Funding

The funding sources listed below are for the subject area you are viewing and may not apply to all degrees listed within it. Please check the description of the individual funding source to make sure it is relevant to your chosen degree.

Faculty interests

Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience

The Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience research group has interests in:

• the application of basic neuroscience and behavioural techniques in rodents to study the neural bases of drug addiction
• the application of human psychopharmacology techniques to explore the detailed effects of drugs on human behaviour and cognition, as well as both preclinical and clinical investigations of the cognitive and other psychological deficits associated with long-term use of drugs such as ecstasy and alcohol
• the neurobiology of motivation, with specialist interests in the control of ingestion, and
• the cognitive neuroscience of human memory and attention, and especially research on deficits associated with disorders such as dementia and schizophrenia.

There is a close inter-relationship between animal, human and clinical work. On the animal side, the Sussex group is one of the strongest groups in any UK university for the behavioural characterisation of transgenic mice, and enjoys collaborative links with molecular geneticists, with the neighbouring Sussex Centre for Neuroscience and with the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). On both the human and the animal side, the group has long-standing links with clinical health professionals across the county.

Professor Pete Clifton How brain systems regulate feeding behaviour, side effects of antipsychotic drugs on body weight.

Dr Hans Crombag Neurobiological and behavioural mechanisms of appetitive learning and memory, contextual learning processes in relapse.

Professor Theodora Duka Alcohol and nicotine addiction: human studies of conditioning, adaptive mechanisms. 

Dr Sarah King Techniques to investigate the mechanisms underlying the effects of stress and drugs on brain and behaviour. 

Dr Eisuke Koya Neuronal ensembles, associative learning, obesity, addiction, synaptic physiology, immunohistochemistry. 

Dr Michael Morgan Substance misuse, impulse control in adolescence and adulthood, psychopathology in substance misusers.

Dr Tamzin Ripley Changes in neuronal plasticity, using behavioural and electrophysiological techniques, and its role in drug abuse.

Professor Jennifer Rusted Psychopharma-cology of human memory, prospective and action-based memory in ageing and dementia.

Professor David Stephens Neurobiological and behavioural mechanisms underlying drug dependence.

Professor Martin Yeomans Appetite control, development of food preferences, dieting as a model of disordered eating and obesity.

Cognitive Psychology

This Cognitive Psychology group has interests in:

• learning and memory, especially implicit learning (including computational simulations of learning), awareness of knowledge states, memory and consciousness
• language and communication, especially the behavioural, cognitive and neuropsychological processes involved in language comprehension and production. Our specialty fields include psycholinguistics, specifically pronoun interpretation, text comprehension, children’s difficulties in text comprehension, and fMRI
• vision and visual perception, where we have particular expertise in visual cognition and attention, face processing, perceptual aspects of driving, perception and action, perception of movement, and the perception of visual art
• the interaction between perceptual processes and other aspects of cognition, as revealed by the methods of cognitive neuroscience, especially multi-sensory interactions including synaesthesia, the cognitive deficits associated with neurological disorders, and the role of attention and working memory in oculomotor control, and
• animal vocal communication and cognition, where we have particular expertise in using playback experiments to tackle questions about communication and cognitive abilities in large terrestrial mammals (elephants, red deer, lions) and non-passerine birds (gulls and owls).

We have expertise in the use of specialised technology including acoustic playback, eye tracking, speech analysis and brain imaging. The Clinical Sciences Imaging Centre houses a 1.5T Siemens MRI scanner and PET/CT, and is used particularly by a number of members of this group. 

The Human Psychophysiology Laboratory is extensively used by this group and includes EEG/ERP equipment, TMS, and eye-trackers.

Dr Chris Bird Cognitive processes through comparing the performance of brain-damaged adults with neurologically healthy controls.

Professor Zoltan Dienes How people acquire knowledge they are not aware of having, computational modelling of such learning.

Professor Alan Garnham Language comprehension, particularly inference; sentence processing; reasoning; mental models theory.

Dr Graham Hole Face recognition, age perception from faces, perceptual aspects of driving (especially ‘looked but failed to see’ accidents).

Dr Ryota Kanai Neural processes and computational principles underlying subjective conscious experiences and qualia, the anatomical and functional neural basis of perceptual and cognitive phenomena.

Dr Beena Khurana Visual cognition, the role of attention in motion perception, processing of human faces.

Dr Karen McComb Mammal communication and cognition, functional questions about animal communication and the nature of animal minds. 

Dr Romi Nijhawan Compensation of neural delays in perception and action, flash-lag effect in vision and action.

Professor Jane Oakhill Mental models theory of text comprehension and reasoning, and children’s text comprehension.

Dr David Reby Vocal communication, sexual communication, crossmodal abilities in non-human animals.

Dr Jamie Ward Human cognitive neuroscience using neuropsychology, fMRI, TMS and EEG. Visit Synaesthesia research.

Developmental and Clinical Psychology

The Development and Clinical Psychology research group has a common aim of advancing theoretical approaches to human development and clinical psychology, often through studying applied questions. Approaches include observational and experimental studies, longitudinal analyses of child development, comparative perspectives, dynamic systems, neural network modelling, and experimental clinical psychopathology. We work closely with clinicians and educationalists, and with typical and special child populations. 

Research focuses on six broad themes:

• social development, family and peer relations 
• using technology to study and support peer collaboration and cognitive change 
• emotional adjustment across the lifespan 
• the aetiology of emotional disorders 
• gesture and communication, and 
• word learning and early cognitive development. 

We have several focused labs: Child Anxiety Theory and Treatment (CATT) Lab, Children and Technology (ChaT) Lab, Sussex Family Research Lab, and Word and Object Reasoning Development (WORD) Lab. 

The group is well-supported with lab facilities, including testing rooms for audio-visual recording, software for video editing and analyses, questionnaire scanning facilities, environments for conducting controlled experimental psychopathology studies, and specialised spaces for conducting a range of studies from habituation to clinical interviews. The group has good links with local daycare, schools and colleges.

Professor Robin Banerjee Social and emotional development of pupils, self-conscious cognition and emotion, self-presentational behaviour.

Dr Kate Cavanagh Cognitive biases and reasoning processes in the emotional disorders, increasing access to psychological therapies.

Professor Graham Davey Experimental psychopathology and anxiety disorders, the causes of perseverative psychopathologies.

Professor Andy Field The role of childhood experience in fear acquisition, parenting and child anxiety.

Dr Anna Franklin The development of colour perception and cognition, broader issues in cognitive and developmental science.

Dr Jessica Horst Cognitive development in children under the age of five; language acquisition, infant and toddler categorisation.

Dr David Leavens Non-verbal communication by apes and humans, joint attention, mother-infant interaction, evolution of language.

Dr Bonamy Oliver Child behaviour, using longitudinal, behavioural genetic designs to better understand family and other environmental influences on behavioural outcomes.

Dr Alison Pike Antecedents and consequences of variation in family relationship quality, including marital, parent-child and sibling.

Dr Nicola Yuill Typical and atypical social cognitive development, autism; technology to support children; children’s language development.

Social and Applied Psychology

The Social and Applied Psychology research group has interests in five broad areas:

• behaviour change: intervention, design and evaluation
• health psychology
• identity, culture and well-being
• intergroup relations and collective behaviour
• pro-social and moral engagement.

The group has good facilities for laboratory-based research involving video recording of individual and group behaviour, and for conducting online experiments. Links also exist with local schools and hospitals for conducting field research.

Dr Rod Bond Group processes, particularly social influence and reaction to deviants; subjective well-being.

Professor Rupert Brown Intergroup relations: prejudice and prejudice reduction, acculturation processes, hate crime, collective guilt.

Dr Richard de Visser Young people’s health behaviour, sexual health and sexual behaviour, gender and health-related behaviour.

Dr Helga Dittmar Social and psychological dimensions of material goods, compulsive buying; sociocultural influences on body image.

Dr John Drury Crowd behaviour, empowerment and positive psychological change, crowding/density, celebration and ‘atmosphere’.

Dr Tom Farsides Factors that facilitate (duty or empathy) or inhibit (moral phobia or selfishness) positive other-concern.

Professor Peter Harris Cognitive, emotional and behavioural response to risk, especially health risks. 

Dr Donna Jessop Impact of personally relevant health-risk information on behaviour change, fear appeals.

Dr Karen Long Inter- and intragroup relations, social identity theory, social and personal identity as sources of self-esteem.

Dr Paul Sparks Attitude theory applied to environmental and health issues: normative influences and self-identity, decision-making.

Dr Viv Vignoles Self and identity, motivational processes and culture and context influences on identity construction; life transitions.

For more detailed information, visit the School of Psychology.

 

Careers and profiles

This PGDip equips you with a critical understanding of cognitive behavioural models of anxiety disorders, depression, psychosis, and personality difficulties. It also enables you to develop the skills to deliver high-quality and creative cognitive behavioural interventions across this range of presenting problems. Successful completion of this degree makes you eligible for accreditation by the BABCP and equips you for a career as a cognitive behavioural therapist.

School and contacts