The core philosophy of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology is to provide a rigorous and in-depth training in the reflective scientist practitioner approach to psychological problems. Being a reflective scientist means that you synthesise strong self-awareness and attunement to others, with a focus on evidence, empiricism, and credible, data-driven theory. These perspectives combine with extensive practical skills training in delivering psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and evaluation across a wide range of NHS settings and populations. Strengths of our programme include the amount of time spent on placement-based learning, the strong theoretical foundation of training, the multiple modalities that trainees are introduced to and the availability of placements across all the core populations of adults, children, people with intellectual disability, and older people. In addition, the NHS in Scotland can provide a wide range of specialist services within which to pursue final year placements. You will learn how to work with individuals, families, groups, multi-disciplinary teams and sometimes wider organisations. During your time with us, you will also conduct a major piece of clinically relevant research, of a suitable quality to meet the standard for peer review. A further strength of our programme is the breadth of subject area expertise in which projects can be supervised. Find out more about our current research in Clinical Psychology Find out more about our staff and their research interests The DClinPsychol Programme includes training to a high standard in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, including Third Wave approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. We also include and encourage the use of a range of other approaches including behavioural, systemic, client-centred, and psychodynamic approaches. In addition, trainees in third year have options to choose advanced training in Interpersonal Therapy; Schema Therapy, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, and Mentalization Based Therapy. Third year options also allow further in depth specialised training in specific populations such as people with psychosis, eating disorders, trauma populations and children and adults with neurological injuries.Trainees on our programme are employed directly by one of nine health boards in Scotland. This means that the majority of your time will be spent working in training placements within your own health board. Boards make significant investment in their trainees, and provide support and career development for their trainees. The geographical spread of our trainees means that teaching is delivered in blocks of several weeks, in-person in Edinburgh, twice a year. There are additional monthly days of both in-person and online training.
