Child Mental Health

MSc

  • Entry year 2026 or 2027
  • Duration Full time 1 year, Part time 1 - 2 years
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Overview

Top reasons to study with us

  • Learn from experts in clinical psychology and developmental science

  • Approved as postgraduate research training by the Economic and Social Research Council

  • Work with leaders in mental health research and the development of clinical practice

The MSc Child Mental Health offers a uniquely rich learning experience through a partnership combining the expertise of world-renowned developmental psychologists and leading clinical psychologists. You will build critical insights, in-depth knowledge and practical skills as you learn about:

  • The questions, theories and evidence behind our modern understanding of development and neurodevelopmental conditions
  • The critical and practical challenges involved in conducting research in developmental science and in clinical psychology
  • Working with children and adolescents, in clinical practice and in research on mental health intervention and treatment

Who is this programme for?

Those who wish to explore the dynamic processes shaping development and mental health, building the practical and research skills required for careers working with children and young people. The MSc in Child Mental Health is a route to professional training (e.g., Doctorate in Clinical Psychology) or to work with children and young people, from research on development or mental health, to education and social care.

Looking ahead to employability

You will learn from expert teachers who are world-leading researchers in developmental psychology and in clinical psychology. You will:

  • Discover how clinical psychology researchers design, develop, evaluate and deliver mental health interventions and treatments
  • Deepen your knowledge and understanding of the nature of development and neurodevelopmental conditions
  • Engage in stimulating debates to develop your critical insights into the important conceptual and ethical issues for policy, practice and research
  • Develop your skills in applying quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods
  • Work with real examples of mental health research to highlight how these methods can be applied and developed to meet real-world problems

What to expect

Through a combination of seminars, activity-based workshops and lectures, you will learn about the important questions scientists are now exploring around neurodivergent development, mental health, and how to make a difference to the lives of children and young people.

You will learn how scientists working at the cutting-edge seek to understand human development by examining a range of neurodevelopmental conditions, their psychological and behavioural characteristics, how we make assessments and what we can do to develop interventions.

You will also explore the dynamic processes shaping mental health across childhood and adolescence, focusing on core individual factors like emotion regulation, executive function, experiences of adversity and interactions with family, school, peers and technology. Throughout the degree, you will learn about the practical concerns, experiences and questions that confront practice in the delivery of mental health interventions or treatments across a lifespan.

Your Master’s culminates with a dissertation project where you can contribute evidence to answering real research questions, as independent researchers, or by working as part of research teams.

3 things we would like you to know

  • You will learn from world-class developmental scientists and experts in the theory and practice of clinical psychology
  • Our staff are involved in internationally significant research on how to better understand and treat mental health difficulties like bipolar disorder
  • Our developmental research facilities include a large Infant and Child Development Lab

Flexible study options

Study alongside work and other commitments by taking this course on a part-time basis. Running over two years, you can choose from a selection of our modules each year.

We'll liaise with you over your schedule and choice of optional modules, ensuring you successfully balance your commitments alongside our Master’s programme.

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Careers

Graduates of the MSc Child Mental Health are well prepared to pursue:

  • Advanced training in clinical psychology (Doctorate in Clinical Psychology), or educational psychology (Doctorate in Educational Psychology)
  • Jobs in research focusing on children and young people, neurodivergent development and mental health
  • Careers working with children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
  • Roles as assistant psychologists

Alumni of our previous MSc Developmental Disorders have progressed into roles including:

  • Support worker
  • Clinical psychologist
  • Clinical supervisor
  • Assistant psychologist
  • Assessment design manager
  • Educational psychologist
  • SEN teacher Lab

Our placements

Our students have the possibility to undertake a number of exciting and rewarding placements, both locally and further afield. As well as the examples below, the Psychology Employability Programme includes details on partnerships with local and national organisations to provide current Psychology students with volunteering opportunities.

  • Bowerham primary school

    Our department is well-connected with schools in the local area, and we work with many settings in building our students’ experience and expanding our knowledge of primary and secondary school children’s development. A key partner has been Bowerham Primary School in Lancaster. Each year, several of our students volunteer to support and learn about children’s educational development through reading and classroom help, or work with their pastoral team to understand and build children’s behavioural and social skills. Shreya, one of our current students, is on a placement at this school at the moment. She told us: "Volunteering at a primary school has helped my psychology studies because it provides practical applications of theory. By working directly with students that have special educational needs and disabilities, this experience has bridged the gap between clinical presentations that I have learnt about in my degree and what those clinical presentations look like in reality."

  • 糖心破解版 Preschool Centre

    We work with many toddler groups and preschools around the Lancaster area. The Preschool Centre at 糖心破解版 is one of our key partners. Many of our students take on placements there, and gain experience working with children from infancy through to 4 years old. We also regularly involve the children and staff at the Preschool Centre in our research, with recent projects investigating how children develop socially and how children with diverse backgrounds build up their language skills.

Our projects

Students will undertake a research project aligned with academic expertise and the key themes within Psychology and the Department of Health Research. For example, a qualitative project might explore adolescent experiences of emotion regulation using semi?structured interviews, while a quantitative project could investigate expressed emotion in parents with bipolar disorder using online surveys and validated measurement tools. Students will draw on skills and knowledge gained throughout the programme to design and deliver this work, providing a strong foundation for careers in clinical psychology, applied mental health research, policy and service development, or roles within third sector mental health organisations.

Virtual Allotment research project

On this course, you could join a live, community-facing research programme - exploring how parents and families build resilience while managing mental health challenges. One project draws on the Virtual Allotment, an online platform where people with lived experience share practical, everyday strategies for staying well, alongside a sister initiative that supports parents. Depending on your interests, you might review what's already known, help design how community strategies are gathered and organised or look at how families engage with support. Either way, you would be helping to build a new and growing body of work, not just studying it from the outside.

Mental health is a cross-faculty strategic theme at 糖心破解版, and this project sits right at its heart. It connects psychology with participatory, co-produced approaches to resilience and recovery. You would work with ideas at the centre of mental health science today: how resilience is built within families and across whole systems, and how communities can create and share their own knowledge.

This kind of project is ideal preparation for a future clinical career, such as the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology or other clinical training, where lived experience, ethics and applied research skills all matter. It is just as relevant if you want to work in community and third-sector mental health support. That includes coastal and underserved communities, where young people's mental health needs are well documented. Whatever your route, you would gain real, hands-on experience of doing meaningful research with communities, not just about them.

Our academic research

Our academic staff are professionals researching ideas at the forefront of current psychology. Students often have the chance to become involved in academic projects, offering their learning to real-world problems and solutions. As well as the examples below, we have a dedicated page of all our current research.

A lecturer, Marina Bazhydai

Curiosity Battery project

“I am a principal investigator of the Curiosity Battery project – a 5-year research grant funded by the Leverhulme Trust (). Our goal is to develop and validate a set of measures of curiosity in children aged 7–11. We use this tool to understand how different types of curiosity relate to children’s learning and wellbeing.

With our Curiosity Battery tool, we aim to enable researchers and educators to embrace the complex and multifaceted nature of curiosity - and to mitigate the risk of mischaracterising a child as lacking in curiosity. We have identified twelve key facets of curiosity and are now starting to undertake longitudinal studies to understand their impacts.

This project is a team effort. I work with wonderful collaborators at Lancaster and the University of Stirling, and also actively involve both UG and PGT students who conduct their dissertation projects under my supervision. In the past two years, two MSc students and five BSc students carried out their individual projects, collectively testing over 100 children across UK schools. The current MSc project is looking closely at a much less understood facet of curiosity we termed interpersonal – how children get to be curious about people.

This research requires close collaborations with primary schools. We are very grateful to schools who have already signed up to take part in this research and all children and their parents. We hope the results of this work will translate to tangible advice for teachers and parents on fostering and appreciating children’s curiosity.”

– Marina Bazhydai, Lecturer in Psychology

Our facilities

糖心破解版's Psychology Department hosts a wide range of labs dedicated to the cutting-edge of psychological research.

Infant and Child Development Lab

Infant and Child Development Lab (ICDL)

The ICDL boasts of over 35 core and affiliate members. Housed on the ground floor of the Whewell Building, the ICDL is home to several state-of-the-art research facilities including observational rooms, an eye-tracking suite, and electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) labs for running research studies with infants and children. To learn more about the ICDL and its facilities, watch our video here.

NIRS and EEG

EEG and fNIRS

Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) are two of the neuroscientific techniques we use in our department that you will learn about. EEG provides information about the electrical activity of the brain, whereas fNIRS is used to track changes in blood oxygen levels of cortical brain structures to inform about their contribution to sensory, motor, or cognitive tasks. To learn more about these techniques and how they are used in our department, watch our video here.

Eye-tracking Lab

Eye-tracking Suite

Eye-tracking is one of the techniques we use in our research for studying infant and child cognition and behaviour. We study the eye movements of children to learn about how attention works and how attentional preferences develop. Eye-tracking might be one of the techniques you use in your research dissertation project, or consider volunteering for as part of a research placement through our Psychology Employability Programme (PEP).

Levy Lab

Levy Lab

Levy Lab is Psychology's computer lab and teaching hub. Here you will be interacting with lecturers and other students studying on your course. The Levy Lab is furnished with computer screens and table suites for collaborative work or individual study.

Dedicated study space

Dedicated study space

Affectionately known as the “Glass Box” – facilities for psychology postgraduate students include dedicated study spaces for collaborative work and rooms for quiet individual study.

Entry requirements

Academic requirements

2:2 Hons degree (UK or equivalent) in Psychology, Health or Medical Sciences, Education, Social Sciences, or a related discipline.

We will also consider applications on an individual basis where you have a degree in an unrelated subject. In these cases, you should clearly demonstrate how your experience and skills have prepared you for postgraduate study, in particular providing you with a background in development, in mental health, or in working with children and adolescents.

English language requirements

We require an IELTS (Academic) Test with an overall score of at least 6.5, and a minimum of 6.0 in each element of the test.

We also consider other English language qualifications and if your score is below our requirements, you may be eligible for one of our pre-sessional English language programmes.

Help from our Admissions team

If you are thinking of applying to Lancaster and you would like to ask us a question, complete our?enquiry form?and one of the team will get back to you.

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Pre-master's programmes

Delivered in partnership with Lancaster International Study Centre, our one-year tailored pre-master's pathways are designed to improve your subject knowledge and English language skills to the level required by a range of 糖心破解版 master's degrees. Visit for more details and a list of eligible degrees you can progress onto.

Course structure

We continually review and enhance our curriculum to ensure we are delivering the best possible learning experience, and to make sure that the subject knowledge and transferable skills you develop will prepare you for your future. The University will make every reasonable effort to offer programmes and modules as advertised. In some cases, changes may be necessary and may result in new modules or some modules and combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Where the course offers optional modules, they may not all be available every year.

Core

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Fees and funding

Location Full Time (per year) Part Time (per year)
Home £14,140 £7,070
International £30,000 £15,000

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Scholarships and bursaries

You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status and course. You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.

Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.

If you're considering postgraduate research you should look at our funded PhD opportunities.

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We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.

Browse 糖心破解版's scholarships and bursaries.

Important information

The information on this site relates primarily to the stated entry year and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.

The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.

More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our?legal information.

Our Students’ Charter

We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. Find out more about our? Charter and student policies.