University of Southampton

Support

As a Programme we pride ourselves on supporting our trainees in a variety of ways.

The University also offers a range of personal and academic support services to all students.  Further information about this can be found at The Student Hub.

Personal/Clinical Tutor

All trainees have a Personal/Clinical Tutor who is a member of the Programme Team, who monitors their progress throughout training and provides pastoral support.

Mentor

All trainees are allocated a Mentor, normally an NHS Clinical Psychologist who is independent of the Programme Team, to act in a confidential support capacity over the three years. Trainees are encouraged to meet their Mentor regularly throughout training and can take time during placement to do this.

Buddy system

There is a buddy system where the incoming cohort are allocated a trainee from the year above who will be their buddy. This provides an additional informal support opportunity for the trainee.

Group meetings

Within the timetable, trainees have structured time for peer group support meetings and Staff, Student Liaison meetings built into the academic timetable and participate in reflective groups as part of their training experience.

For trainees who come from Black, Asian and other underrepresented cultural groups within Clinical Psychology, we also have a reflective group to enable the opportunity to discuss issues that may arise across training within a supportive environment. We also have groups to offer support to those who are neurodivergent, parents and carers, those who have long term health conditions and males.

Why train at Southampton?

The clinical psychology programme practises the scientist-practitioner model and is committed to using evidence-based practice in all areas of clinical work. The primary theoretical orientations are cognitive-behavioural therapy and systemic therapy. There is also a strong emphasis on neuropsychology and leadership.

In addition to specific modalities, the course adopts an ethos of anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practice and values critical community psychology, recovery and wellbeing approaches. The course recognises the inequalities that have been perpetuated by systemic discrimination and actively acts to address this through an ethos of integrating equity, diversity and inclusion throughout the programme.

You’ll learn to evaluate evidence, work within a formulation driven framework as a basis for interventions, and learn to produce high-quality, publishable clinical research to a doctorate level. As clinicians, who work at the boundaries of existing evidence-base, you’ll also learn an evidence-generating approach to clinical practice that is based on the combination of key formulation skills, together with an extensive knowledge of psychological processes and how to modify them within a client-centred approach. These approaches equip you with skills to work with a wide range of clinical presentations across the life span, and to offer consultancy and leadership to a range of professional disciplines.

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) have set out the Standards of Proficiency for practitioner psychologists (SOPs). For further information please visit the HCPC website.

View the Course Description Document

School of Psychology

The Programme is based in a thriving and dynamic Psychology Department that hosts a suite of postgraduate CBT programmes, as well as doctoral training programmes in Educational Psychology and Health Psychology.

Psychology at Southampton has a tradition of world-class research. Academics within our department work at the forefront of their fields, committed to the highest-quality scientific investigation on a range of social, educational and health-related issues that together make a real impact.

The department comprises four research centres: 

1. Centre for Clinical and Community Applications of Health Psychology,
2. Centre for Innovation in Mental Health,
3. Centre for Perception and Cognition,
4. Centre for Research on Self and Identity.

Within each of these centres, staff conduct research relevant to abnormal or Clinical Psychology.

Aims and Core Philosophy

Our Strengths

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

We are nationally recognised as leaders for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI). We demonstrate a strong, consistent commitment to action in the field and are committed to making EDI a core component of all our teaching. Our staff and students contribute to the wider voice of EDI both Nationally and Internationally through Programme staff and trainee publications, training, workshops and conference presentations on EDI related topics.

Experts by experience

We value active and inclusive experts by experience (EbE) Integration in the Programme. We have widespread processes to actively recruit experts by experience alongside robust support for EbE involvement. We gain regular feedback from experts by experience about the positive factors of working with us, highlighting our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, the supportive nature of our Team as well as the personally rewarding nature of doing this type of work.

Student experience

Our Programme is rated in the Top 10 of DClin Programmes, out of 37 Programmes nationally, based upon student feedback (BPS Alternative Handbook, 2025).

We are also ranked: 

• 2nd for our focus on research and theoretical knowledge
• 6th for our EDI work
• 1st for neuropsychology nationally compared to other DClin Programmes (BPS Alternative Handbook, 2025)

Our module lead delivered a workshop on teaching practices at the national neuropsychology conference (November 2024).

Qualitative feedback highlighted that our staff are supportive and responsive, and we pride ourselves on the quality of pastoral care that we offer our trainees.