King's College London

Scholarships available, see Fees & Funding section for more information.

“We are proud to have been awarded an IoPPN Excellence Award in 2023/2024 for student satisfaction based on the Postgraduate Taught Education Survey (PTES)”.

Our Affective Disorders course has been created for a broad spectrum of students and mental health professionals who are interested in specialist training from world-class experts. You will study all aspects of affective disorders, ranging from their characterisation and assessment to the challenges in treating these conditions. Our course is designed to be interdisciplinary, and its focus is on both biological and psychological aspects. It is therefore suitable for students who seek to broaden their knowledge beyond professional boundaries, such as medicine, psychology, or neuroscience.

Affective disorders are also known as mood disorders and the main types include depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders. Affective disorders are leading contributors to the global burden of disease and specialist training in this area is currently sparse. The purpose of our course is to meet the growing need for a graduate training course that focuses exclusively on affective disorders.

Our Affective Disorders course is accessible to a wide audience, but is of particular interest to psychiatrists, GPs, psychologists, neuroscientists, biomedicine graduates, related medical professionals and pharmaceutical scientists. It is particularly suitable for health professionals who wish to refocus their career and specialise in affective disorders. It is equally suitable for health professionals who already work in a relevant field and wish to gain recognition for their expertise. It is very well suited for psychology graduates who wish to pursue clinical psychology training, or graduates from any related discipline who consider pursuing a research PhD in affective disorders.

This course adopts a multidisciplinary approach by capitalising on the most recent findings from a range of clinical and non-clinical disciplines, such as psychiatry, psychology, genetics, neuroscience, epidemiology and biostatistics. Upon completion, you will be able to integrate knowledge from different disciplines and relate it to the behaviours and symptoms present in affective disorders. You will be trained in the key scientific and methodological aspects of affective disorders, their care and related research. You will also gain transferable skills through a variety of tutorials and exercises.

You will benefit from the teaching of world-renowned experts in the field, conduct a research project and have the option of a clinical observership across the full range of affective disorders services within the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

You will be taught by The Centre for Affective Disorders, within the IoPPN, which represents a centre of excellence for understanding the science related to mood and anxiety disorders and using this knowledge to develop new treatments, including both psychological and pharmacological treatments. The clinical observership will enable you to observe various presentations, treatments and outcomes first-hand.

We will use a delivery method that will ensure students have a rich, exciting experience from the start. Face-to-face teaching will be complemented and supported with elements of digital learning.