• Question: What qualifications do you need to become a psychologist?

    Asked by 357dech39 to Andy, Diana, James, Mary Jane, Wil on 6 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Wilhelmiina Toivo

      Wilhelmiina Toivo answered on 6 Mar 2017:


      If you want to be a psychologist who is doing research, you need to have a university degree and usually a masters degree after that. Then you can move on to your PhD which is the first stage of being a researcher – you work as a researcher but are still a student, so you do not have an actual paid position at the university (you usually have a scholarship and you do some teaching so it does feel like a proper job!). After you complete that, you can get a researcher or a lecturer position.

      If you want to be a therapist or a clinical psychologist, you also need a university degree and after that you need some work experience, and then you can do your training degree where you get to work with patients.

    • Photo: Mary Jane Spiller

      Mary Jane Spiller answered on 6 Mar 2017:


      Like Wil says, you need to first get a degree in psychology, and then to become a qualified psychologist you either need a doctoral level degree, so even more time at university. You can find out about careers in psychology at the British Psychological Society webpages – https://careers.bps.org.uk/
      There are lots of different areas of psychology, and you need different qualifications and experience for them. And a great thing to do if you’re interested in this is to try and get some volunteering work when you’re old enough, maybe helping out with clubs and activities with younger children or something.

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