Welcome to the start of our new blog theme on ‘Journeys towards and into Clinical Psychology’. This blog introduces the series. The first blog will follow soon. If you’re a qualified or aspiring Clinical Psychologist, particularly from a background who are underrepresented in the profession then please do email Ellie (drellie@headspaceguildford.co.uk) if you are interested in writing for this series. I look forward to hearing from you.
To train to be a Clinical Psychologist you need an undergraduate degree in Psychology or an equivalent, relevant experience and then you can apply for the doctorate. This training course is 3 years funded by the NHS and is highly competitive. In 2021 only 22% of people who applied secured a place. In total it takes at least 10 years to training to be a Clinical Psychologist and the training can be gruelling. It’s not a career for the faint hearted.
Many, many candidates for Clinical Psychology are white and middle class. Most are women (although the men tend to rise fast and end up leading services). There is a huge gap in the admission of people from the global majority, people with disabilities, people who don’t follow a traditional pathway into the career. We know that the profession of Clinical Psychology is not doing enough to encourage diversity in its ranks. I believe this directly impacts on the ways in which we then can offer support and the frameworks and theories we draw on. This means we can’t be truly accessible to anyone who might need our support.
We wanted to highlight the various ways you can get into Clinical Psychology to encourage more people to consider it as a career. Over the next few months we’ll be adding journeys to this blog to show the different ways people gain a place on the doctoral course and progress on to being a qualified Clinical Psychologist.