Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience

Careers

Careers in Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience

Postgraduate study at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience provides graduates with the skills and knowledge to pursue a range of career paths. Our close links with South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) enable us to offer work experience placements as part of many of our programmes. These provide a valuable insight into an area of work, as well as helping students to establish where their career interests lie and assisting them in making valuable connections.

What do IoPPN graduates do?

Many graduates of our taught programmes go on to pursue PhD research, often choosing to stay at the IoPPN.
As many of our taught programmes provide an excellent stepping stone to a career in clinical psychology, a number of our graduates move onto a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology.
A significant number of our graduates move into clinical roles within the NHS or other healthcare settings, eg psychologist, behavioural therapist, psychological wellbeing practitioner.
Some of our programmes lead to careers in specialist roles such as health or clinical psychology or into roles requiring specific expertise in areas such as addictions, dementia and epilepsy.
Other graduates are already established in their field of work and use their qualification as evidence of professional development in order to obtain promotion, or to take their career in a more specialist direction.
There are opportunities to move into leadership roles in health and social care settings or to relevant policy-related roles in national or local organisations.
It is also possible to move into the private sector, into areas such as scientific publishing, human resources, occupational health, management consultancy or roles in the pharmaceutical industry.
Research students generally pursue a career in academia or in continued research but may also obtain senior positions within the NHS, policy organisations and industry.

Find out more:

Read about career paths from each of our courses in the individual programme entries on our online prospectus.
See what London graduates do on the University of London's Careers Group website.

Support for current students

The King’s Careers and Employability provides help and support in finding the right job when you graduate. The IoPPN has a dedicated careers adviser who offers one-to-one careers appointments at the Denmark Hill campus every fortnight, as well as careers skills workshops for IoPPN students. The careers service also run a range of fairs and ‘themed’ weeks.

Additional careers support is provided by departments, who may run career development events focused on specific areas of work, provide advice on research careers and offer careers presentations from external speakers.