Global Mental Health and Society MSc

The MSc in Global Mental Health and Society is offered as one-year full-time or two-year part-time programme.

The programme consists of 180 credits, comprised of:

• 3 x 20-credit required core courses
• 3 x 20-credit optional courses
• a 60-credit dissertation course

You will complete six courses over two semesters from September to April. Three of these will be compulsory core courses.

Courses

Culture and Mental Health

The first core course, Culture and Mental Health, engages you in theorising and problematising key concepts such as:

• ‘mental health’
• ‘mental illness'
• ‘emotion’
• ‘trauma’
• western diagnostic categories
• ‘healing’

This course also gets you to examine their cross-cultural application in practice.

This course will draw primarily on literature from:

• medical anthropology
• psychological anthropology
• transcultural psychiatry
• cross-cultural psychology

Critical Approaches to Global Mental Health and Social Change

The second core course, Critical Approaches to Global Mental Health and Social Change, enables students to critically engage with key policy and practice debates in global mental health including:

• the framing of global mental health as a policy problem
• social, psycho-social, and biomedical interventions
• marginality and intersectionality including gender and social inequalities
• the role of communities in global mental health
• impact of war and disaster
• poverty and development

This course will draw on interdisciplinary global mental health literature including from:

• public health
• medical anthropology
• social work
• psychology
• international development
• Mad studies
• transcultural psychiatry

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Mental Health: Practice, Policy and Research

The third core course, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Mental Health: Practice, Policy and Research, focuses on the application of inter-disciplinary approaches to practice, policy and research.

You will develop skills in cross and inter-disciplinary dialogues and gain a clearer understanding of different research paradigms in global mental health.

Option courses

The other three courses are options. These may be selected from across the University, drawing on the expertise of faculty members within:

• social and political sciences
• clinical psychology
• health in social sciences
• public health
• other disciplines

Project or dissertation

From May to August you will complete either a placement-based project or a standard research dissertation.

The aim of the placement-based dissertation is to provide students with the opportunity to work on their dissertation within the context of a workplace of their choosing. This could be within a public sector, a voluntary, a charitable or a private organisation, subject to the approval of the Programme Director.

• [Placement-based dissertation information] (https://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/students/development-hub/masters/placement-based-learning/msc-placement-based-dissertations)

Find out more about compulsory and optional courses

We link to the latest information available. Please note that this may be for a previous academic year and should be considered indicative.

Global Mental Health Research Network

The programme will be taught by world-leading experts from Edinburgh's Global Mental Health Research Network, drawing together multiple disciplines, including:

• medical anthropology
• social work
• psychology
• trans-cultural psychiatry

You will also engage with key overseas collaborators of the Network through video, case studies and guest lectures.

Find out more about compulsory and optional courses

We link to the latest information available. Please note that this may be for a previous academic year and should be considered indicative.

Practical experiences can complement teaching in the classroom. An integral part of this programme are work-based projects.

These consist of eight weeks of research with a host organisation in Africa, South and South East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America as well as in the UK.

Our extensive network of global mental health partners include local and global non-government organisations (NGOs) and research organisations.

Graduating from this programme will enable you to:

• critically engage with key conceptual and policy debates in global mental health, applying contextually appropriate perspectives
• apply concepts, theories and methods from a diversity of disciplines (for example, social work, medical anthropology, clinical psychology, psychiatry and development studies)
• independently apply, integrate and critically reflect upon different disciplinary approaches to global mental health
• critically assess complex societal issues from an open-minded, reflexive and reasoned perspective
• communicate effectively with a variety of audiences
• critically apply the knowledge acquired to inform future global mental health programmes, practice, policies and research

Global mental health is a growing field with significant recent and ongoing investment from multilateral development agencies and governments, in both research and implementation.

This qualification will be help prepare you for careers in global mental health policy, implementation and research.

You would also be qualified to undertake similar careers with the UK health sector.

These entry requirements are for the 2023/24 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2024/25 academic year will be published on 2 October 2023.

A UK 2:1 honours degree or its international equivalent.

Students from China

This degree is Band C.

• Postgraduate entry requirements for students from China

International qualifications

Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

• Entry requirements by country

English language requirements

You must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies, regardless of your nationality or country of residence.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic: total 7.0 with at least 6.0 in each component.
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 100 with at least 20 in each component. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
• C1 Advanced (CAE) / C2 Proficiency (CPE): total 185 with at least 169 in each component.
• Trinity ISE: ISE III with passes in all four components.
• PTE Academic: total 70 with at least 59 in each component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE, in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

• UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries (non-MESC).

• Approved universities in non-MESC

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than three and a half years old at the beginning of your programme of study.

Find out more about our language requirements:

• English language requirements

Tuition fees

UK government postgraduate loans

If you live in the UK, you may be able to apply for a postgraduate loan from one of the UK’s governments.

The type and amount of financial support you are eligible for will depend on:

• your programme
• the duration of your studies
• your tuition fee status

Programmes studied on a part-time intermittent basis are not eligible.

Other funding opportunities

Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:

• Search for funding