STUDY
Institution code: | S82 |
---|---|
UCAS code: | N/A |
Start date: | September 2025 |
Duration: | Two years part-time |
Location: | Ipswich |
Typical Offer: | An undergraduate degree and clinical experience of at least two years. Applicants are expected to have achieved an Introductory course in Counselling. |
Institution code: | S82 |
---|---|
UCAS code: | N/A |
Start date: | September 2025 |
Duration: | Two years part-time |
---|---|
Location: | Ipswich |
Typical Offer: | An undergraduate degree and clinical experience of at least two years. Applicants are expected to have achieved an Introductory course in Counselling. |
Overview
The MSc programme in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Counselling is an advanced professional and clinical training for students who wish to practice as psychotherapists offering cognitive behaviour therapy and psychodynamic therapy.
Having this dual track approach to understanding mental health widens opportunities to work in a wide range of mental health settings, both statutory, voluntary, and private. The course enables the capacity to work from different theoretical approaches to understanding both research and its application to clinical theory and practice.
A dissertation will allow you to explore your integrative approach to therapy and evidence-based practice. The course will enable you to work towards applications for BACP registration and accreditation, and British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) accreditation.
There is a substantial evidence base for offering cognitive therapies for a range of psychological diagnoses, including depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This MSc also offers you the opportunity to practice approaches to time limited psychodynamic therapy with an evidence base for depression.
On successful completion of the course, you will be awarded a MSc Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Counselling. Students who leave the course early may be eligible for a Postgraduate Certificate in Counselling on successful completion of least 60 credits.
Course Modules
This a hybrid course consisting of online and lectures at university on Thursday 9.00am till 3.00pm for twenty weeks and eight Friday and Saturday blocks across each year. Trainee counsellors are also required to complete 50 clinical placement hours in year one, and 100 in year two, these hours will count towards accreditation (further independent hours will be required) or registration with professional bodies such as the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and/or the British Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies (BABCP). 
The face-to-face element of the course will be delivered throughout each of the autumn and spring semesters with the additional seamless, continuous learning on Brightspace throughout each semester. Students are advised to spread their studies over at least two years to enable successful completion of clinical practice hours (150) which will enable students towards application for registration or accreditation with the BACP and BABCP.
All modules are currently mandatory. Downloadable information regarding all Â鶹´«Ã½ courses, including Key Facts, Course Aims, Course Structure and Assessment, is available in the Definitive Course Record.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is based on the principle that cognitions (thoughts, images and memories) and behaviours have a significant impact on mood and functioning. Emotions, cognitions and behaviours are inter-connected and changes at the cognitive level will impact both emotional experience and behaviours. The concept of the inter-relationship between the cognitions, behaviours and emotions underpins a theoretical understanding of both our everyday experience of ourselves, others and the world, as well as psychological distress and disturbance.
The cognitive aspect of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy refers to interventions and treatments that address cognitions and cognitive processes which, according to the theory, are implicated in clients’ difficulties and their recovery from those difficulties. Techniques aim to increase awareness of thinking processes and the ways in which people generate meaning out of their experiences. Methods such as Socratic questioning and guided discovery are used to explore cognitions and cognitive styles. Clients are helped to evaluate their thoughts and generate alternative, less distressing and more realistic understandings of events. Cognitions can generate difficulties, but behaviours or actions can also generate and perpetuate psychological distress. Behaviours such as avoidance can act to maintain problems. Therapy, in the context of a collaboratively agreed conceptualisation, encourages clients to test their predictions and assumptions which results in new learning that can enable the identification of possibilities for change. Interventions around behaviour can include behavioural experiments, activity scheduling, surveys, and experimenting with new ways of acting in the world. Behavioural changes are supported by work in the session with the therapist.
This module aims to give students a dedicated opportunity to advance their skills by incorporating all the theoretical approaches learned on the course and by engaging with the more complex aspects of the counselling relationship. Students will be expected to use role-play or bring current examples of client work to enable focus on skills development and consider how to be therapeutically helpful. Students will consider their use of supervision to enable effective therapeutic intervention.
The module encourages students to become self-reflexive practitioners through practice-based learning. It facilitates awareness of personal and professional development and career possibilities, supported by a professional organisation with a solid ethical framework for practice. It is an essential aspect of any counselling training that students reflect not only on knowledge learnt, but also on the inner emotional life of themselves and others and the dynamics of relationships they are involved in. In accordance with British Association for Counselling (BACP) requirements for a substantial self-awareness component, this module encourages experiential learning through participation in group processes, including experiential group and peer work and case discussion group. Throughout the year students will be completing a learning journal that supports and illuminates the work done in other parts of the course, as well as demonstrating their developing self-awareness.
A psychodynamic approach is based upon the principle that repetitive patterns can be identified in the narrative of an individual’s life. In time limited psychodynamic counselling a central pattern becomes the focus for collaborative work within a time-limited framework. Establishing a Dynamic Focus and working with the termination of the work and its emotional meaning are therefore key and distinguishing components of short-term psychodynamic counselling.
There are several fundamental principles that underpin a psychodynamic approach to counselling, firstly it is through both new understanding and new adaptive experiences that insight is gained and thus the possibility for change and development to take place. Relationships and activities are dynamic, and this theoretical approach imagines each person as both author and product of his or her own history.
This module provides grounding in a range of appropriate research methods and research skills, and the use of an evidence-based approach to aid clinical decision-making. Evidence-based approaches offer a way to think about, evaluate and critically reflect upon our professional knowledge and decision-making in the application of psychotherapy and counselling. This module enables students to become familiar with the methodological approaches and developments in research in counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy, including opportunities to understand the different paradigms that exist within counselling and within research approaches. It also provides opportunities to critically engage with a variety of current approaches in research at the level of both methodology and method. Students will not be conducting their own research; you learn skills in both qualitative and quantitative research approaches This will enhance your ability to interpret and deliver effective therapy as a reflective practitioner.
This module provides students with opportunities for ongoing clinical discussion groups, which take place via written or group presentation. This helps embed an advanced standard of clinical work into learning, enabling the ongoing reflection that is necessary to professional development as a counsellor. The module will be delivered as clinical supervision alternative weeks. On the alternate week you will be placed in Peer Supervision Groups where you will be expected to work on exercises within Brightspace. You will have to record your work and bring it to supervision the following week to evidence that the work has been completed.
Students will practice presentation and active learning to enable them to build knowledge including recognising specific conditions, utilise knowledge to make therapeutic decisions and plans, multidisciplinary support, and/or referral to other professionals.
The Dissertation will enable students to bring together their clinical learning from placement with their theoretical learning, and to use research and evidence-based approaches to develop their professional approach.
Throughout the course students will learn to use approaches to counselling and research that offer a research-based approach, focusing on the evidence base and how to deliver effective psychotherapy.
Psychodynamic Counselling and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy are based upon distinct theoretical frameworks and ways of practicing clinically as well as sharing in some common principles and methods and this is reflected in the design of the course. We aim to broaden student’s experience and knowledge by exploring practice within a variety of contexts and arenas. In addition, we focus on encouraging students to form their own unique approach and to be able to reflect and justify this both practically and theoretically.
Course Modules
This a hybrid course consisting of online and lectures at university. Trainee counsellors are also required to complete 50 clinical placement hours in year one, and 100 in year two, these hours will count towards accreditation (further independent hours will be required) or registration with professional bodies such as the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and/or the British Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies (BABCP). 
The face-to-face element of the course will be delivered throughout each of the autumn and spring semesters with the additional seamless, continuous learning on Brightspace throughout each semester. Students are advised to spread their studies over at least two years to enable successful completion of clinical practice hours (150) which will enable students towards application for registration or accreditation with the BACP and BABCP.
All modules are currently mandatory. Downloadable information regarding all Â鶹´«Ã½ courses, including Key Facts, Course Aims, Course Structure and Assessment, is available in the Definitive Course Record.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is based on the principle that cognitions (thoughts, images and memories) and behaviours have a significant impact on mood and functioning. Emotions, cognitions and behaviours are inter-connected and changes at the cognitive level will impact both emotional experience and behaviours. The concept of the inter-relationship between the cognitions, behaviours and emotions underpins a theoretical understanding of both our everyday experience of ourselves, others and the world, as well as psychological distress and disturbance.
The cognitive aspect of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy refers to interventions and treatments that address cognitions and cognitive processes which, according to the theory, are implicated in clients’ difficulties and their recovery from those difficulties. Techniques aim to increase awareness of thinking processes and the ways in which people generate meaning out of their experiences. Methods such as Socratic questioning and guided discovery are used to explore cognitions and cognitive styles. Clients are helped to evaluate their thoughts and generate alternative, less distressing and more realistic understandings of events. Cognitions can generate difficulties, but behaviours or actions can also generate and perpetuate psychological distress. Behaviours such as avoidance can act to maintain problems. Therapy, in the context of a collaboratively agreed conceptualisation, encourages clients to test their predictions and assumptions which results in new learning that can enable the identification of possibilities for change. Interventions around behaviour can include behavioural experiments, activity scheduling, surveys, and experimenting with new ways of acting in the world. Behavioural changes are supported by work in the session with the therapist.
This module aims to give students a dedicated opportunity to advance their skills by incorporating all the theoretical approaches learned on the course and by engaging with the more complex aspects of the counselling relationship. Students will be expected to use role-play or bring current examples of client work to enable focus on skills development and consider how to be therapeutically helpful. Students will consider their use of supervision to enable effective therapeutic intervention.
The module encourages students to become self-reflexive practitioners through practice-based learning. It facilitates awareness of personal and professional development and career possibilities, supported by a professional organisation with a solid ethical framework for practice. It is an essential aspect of any counselling training that students reflect not only on knowledge learnt, but also on the inner emotional life of themselves and others and the dynamics of relationships they are involved in. In accordance with British Association for Counselling (BACP) requirements for a substantial self-awareness component, this module encourages experiential learning through participation in group processes, including experiential group and peer work and case discussion group. Throughout the year students will be completing a learning journal that supports and illuminates the work done in other parts of the course, as well as demonstrating their developing self-awareness.
A psychodynamic approach is based upon the principle that repetitive patterns can be identified in the narrative of an individual’s life. In time limited psychodynamic counselling a central pattern becomes the focus for collaborative work within a time-limited framework. Establishing a Dynamic Focus and working with the termination of the work and its emotional meaning are therefore key and distinguishing components of short-term psychodynamic counselling.
There are several fundamental principles that underpin a psychodynamic approach to counselling, firstly it is through both new understanding and new adaptive experiences that insight is gained and thus the possibility for change and development to take place. Relationships and activities are dynamic, and this theoretical approach imagines each person as both author and product of his or her own history.
This module provides grounding in a range of appropriate research methods and research skills, and the use of an evidence-based approach to aid clinical decision-making. Evidence-based approaches offer a way to think about, evaluate and critically reflect upon our professional knowledge and decision-making in the application of psychotherapy and counselling. This module enables students to become familiar with the methodological approaches and developments in research in counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy, including opportunities to understand the different paradigms that exist within counselling and within research approaches. It also provides opportunities to critically engage with a variety of current approaches in research at the level of both methodology and method. Students will not be conducting their own research; you learn skills in both qualitative and quantitative research approaches This will enhance your ability to interpret and deliver effective therapy as a reflective practitioner.
This module provides students with opportunities for ongoing clinical discussion groups, which take place via written or group presentation. This helps embed an advanced standard of clinical work into learning, enabling the ongoing reflection that is necessary to professional development as a counsellor. The module will be delivered as clinical supervision alternative weeks. On the alternate week you will be placed in Peer Supervision Groups where you will be expected to work on exercises within Brightspace. You will have to record your work and bring it to supervision the following week to evidence that the work has been completed.
Students will practice presentation and active learning to enable them to build knowledge including recognising specific conditions, utilise knowledge to make therapeutic decisions and plans, multidisciplinary support, and/or referral to other professionals.
The Dissertation will enable students to bring together their clinical learning from placement with their theoretical learning, and to use research and evidence-based approaches to develop their professional approach.
Throughout the course students will learn to use approaches to counselling and research that offer a research-based approach, focusing on the evidence base and how to deliver effective psychotherapy.
Psychodynamic Counselling and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy are based upon distinct theoretical frameworks and ways of practicing clinically as well as sharing in some common principles and methods and this is reflected in the design of the course. We aim to broaden student’s experience and knowledge by exploring practice within a variety of contexts and arenas. In addition, we focus on encouraging students to form their own unique approach and to be able to reflect and justify this both practically and theoretically.
WHY SUFFOLK
2nd in the UK for Career Prospects
3rd in the UK for spend on academic services
4th in the UK for Teaching Satisfaction
Entry Requirements
Career Opportunities
Those who go onto accredit with the BABCP are highly likely to gain positions in the NHS offering CBT. All trainees who have successfully completed the course have gone on to gain employment in various agencies both in public and voluntary sector. Some have even created new roles within various agencies.
Facilities and Resources
Whatever you choose to study, you will learn in state-of-the-art surroundings. We have invested across the University to create an environment showcasing the latest teaching facilities enabling you to achieve great things.
Every teaching room has state-of-the-art AV equipment enhancing students learning experience and spread across the open study areas there are approximately 50 iMacs. The dual function technology allows students to choose between Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac software, allowing students to utilise the technology that best supports their chosen field of study.
The Waterfront Building supports flexible learning with open study on all floors, where students can access networked computers.
Unibuddy: Chat to our Students and Staff
Related News
- 12 July 2024
- 26 January 2024
- 21 August 2023