Our Mental Health, Ethics & Law MSc is delivered by two internationally recognised centres of excellence and provides an integrated, strongly interdisciplinary education in mental health, ethics, and law. It equips graduates to become leaders in healthcare, mental health law, or policy.
As a student on the programme, you will have the unique opportunity to study alongside others from a wide range of academic and professional disciplines, at the heart of London’s legal and psychiatric world.
This strongly interdisciplinary programme will enable you to investigate the interface between mental health, law and ethics at a theoretical level and to engage directly with the dilemmas and experience of illness encountered in practice. It will expand your understanding both within and beyond your own disciplines, and will provide you with the skills necessary to analyse and critique current mental health law, policy and clinical practice.
The programme is for anyone concerned with mental health who wishes to study the clinical, ethical and legal thinking behind current law, policy and practice. It has been designed for health professionals, lawyers, policy makers and all those with a relevant first degree who are keen to consider the difficult questions raised by mental ill health and society’s response.
The MSc is led by the Dickson Poon School of Law (Centre of Medical Law and Ethics) in collaboration with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. A wide range of optional modules are offered within the three core disciplines, as well related disciplines, drawing on relevant expertise from across the College. The core teaching is highly integrated, with the dissertation module requiring an interdisciplinary approach that includes clinical, legal and philosophical perspectives.
Interest in the intersection of these disciplines is growing, both nationally and internationally, and the expertise within the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics and Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience means that King’s is ideally positioned to provide an innovative taught postgraduate programme in this area.
This course is primarily taught at the King’s College London Strand Campus, with teaching on some modules also taking place on the Waterloo Campus or at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience on the Denmark Hill campus. As indicated in the module list, some optional modules are taught exclusively online.
Centrally located and well connected, Waterloo brings together students from health, science and law, just steps from the South Bank. It's also home to the world's #2 nursing school – the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery (QS 2026).
Strand Campus sits along the Thames at London's cultural heart. Alongside world-class teaching spaces, students enjoy access to the pedestrianised Strand Quad, with Somerset House and iconic landmarks just steps away.
Home to leading faculties in psychiatry, medicine and dentistry, the Denmark Hill Campus combines world‑class health research and strong NHS hospital links with a friendly neighbourhood feel, green spaces, cafés and excellent transport connections.
