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Opportunities for psychotherapists and psychologists
The practice of psychological therapy and the provision of psycho-social interventions lie at the heart of mental health care. It is therefore not surprising that South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust employs almost 300 members of staff in applied psychology, psychotherapy and arts therapies.
Vacancies
For up-to-date information on job opportunities, please see our current vacancies on the NHS Jobs website.
Applied Psychology
Clinical and counselling psychologists are the two largest professional groups within the ‘psychology and psychotherapies’ staff working for the Trust. They work in most adult services but only clinical psychologists are currently employed in child and adolescent mental health care. Clinical psychologists provide psychological assessments, deliver psychological therapy and work with paid and unpaid carers to enhance the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions. In addition their doctoral level training enables them to design and implement various methods of audit and service evaluation.
Counselling psychologists are trained to provide formal psychological therapy to adults. Their training involves both directive (cognitive behavioural), non-directive (Rogerian) and interpretive (psychodynamic) models of psychotherapy as well as research methods for evaluating process and outcomes in psychological therapy. Most counselling psychologists work in the Trust’s Psychological Therapies in Primary Care service and in the Community Drug and Alcohol Treatment teams but they also work in specialist services, CMHTs, Learning Disabilities and Older Adult services.
Applied psychologists who have trained outside the United Kingdom can work in the NHS if they undertake a period of additional training, under a ‘Statement of Equivalence’ programme that is determined by the British Psychological Society. London is a cosmopolitan city and we always welcome well qualified staff from other parts of the world.
Psychotherapists
Most medical and non-medical psychotherapists work within the Trust’s specialist services. Cognitive behaviour therapists work primarily in the Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy Unit (BCPU) which specialises in anxiety related disorders, especially obsessive compulsive disorder, and in the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic. Child psychotherapists, who are trained as psychoanalytic practitioners, work across all the CAMHS teams while adult (psychodynamic) psychotherapists work in hospital-based psychotherapy departments alongside their medical colleagues. Adult psychotherapists also work in the Trust’s specialist Eating Disorder service while others are employed in the Trust’s national services (services for deaf people and the Henderson Hospital services for people with a personality disorder).
Practitioners of systemic psychotherapy (family therapists) also work in a variety of settings, including specialist adult family therapy services (Prudence Skynner Family Therapy Clinic), specialist CAMHS family therapy services and in the Trust’s highly regarded Eating Disorder services. The Trust runs a highly successful training course in family therapy that is accredited by the Institute of Family Therapy. This course has been responsible for training a considerable number of non-family therapists in systemic psychotherapy throughout the Trust.
Arts therapists
The grouping of arts therapists within the Trust combines a number of allied professionals. Their training has both common elements (most notably a background in the psychoanalytic tradition) as well as very distinct elements associated with the particular therapeutic medium (visual arts, drama, dance and movement and music) employed with clients. All arts therapists encourage people to express their feelings through art in order to aid their recovery.
Within the Trust there are a number of arts therapists who work in acute hospital settings, day care settings and in community settings. Arts therapists mostly work in adult services but there are also a significant number of arts therapists who specialise in working with children and young people. South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust is fortunate in having some of the country’s leading clinical practitioners working here.
