psychotherapy - online foundation course? (I'm abroad right now)

cakampoletje

Hi all,

I'm posted abroad with my job at the moment, but will be returning to Ireland next summer and I'm hoping to apply for a psychotherapy course next year (at the moment I'm looking at the MSc in DCU, with an Autumn 2016 start).

I'm in my mid thirties, and have a psychology degree (although I'm not working in the field), and have undertaken a lot of therapy and personal development work over the past two years.

I see that a lot of courses require recent relevant experience or voluntary experience, but unfortunately, due to the language barrier, there are no opportunities for me to volunteer where I am right now. However, there are parts of my current role that involve dealing with individuals in crisis/distress, and this may be sufficient for the application.

I was advised that, given the lack of volunteer opportunities where I am based right now, it would be worthwhile to take an online foundation course in psychotherapy in this academic year, which would help me to get a feel for the subject and strengthen my application.

If anyone has any experience of an online course (Irish or international), and could give me any pointers I'd appreciate it. I realise that it's probably not the best delivery method for this subject, but if it's just to get a feel for the material, participate in some online tutorials/groups etc, it would probably be enough to give me an introduction to what's ahead.

And if anyone has experience of the DCU course and would be open to sharing a bit about the experience I'd love to hear from you in a PM.

Thanks for reading!

JuliusCaesar

A quick google throws up http://online.essex.ac.uk/news-and-events/New-online-Counselling-and-Psychotherapy-programme-launched/ and a list of others. Can't comment on the quality. This one was supposed to be good: http://www.derby.ac.uk/online/course/counselling-studies-and-skills-not-license-practice-university-diploma

cakampoletje

Thanks for that. I spoke with the University of Essex today - they no longer run that course, but it is still being offered by Tavistock and Portman - I wanted to add the link here for anyone else who is interested but Boards is telling me I can't post URLs as a new user, so I guess just google it!

They both look like good courses, but the fees are a good bit more than I was hoping to pay for an online foundation course (3-4k), so I think I might lean in the direction of one of the Irish ones. PCI and Tivoli are the ones I have identified so far... the blended learning course in PCI sounds like a good introduction, I may be able to make it back to Dublin to attend the two weekend workshops (I've read a few posts about PCI on here that were not fully positive, but I'm guessing the foundation course is fairly basic and would be reasonably standard across the board?).

dar100

Don't see why DCU would not take you, without experience, considering you have a psychology degree