MSc Play Therapy

You can study part-time over three years and will benefit from placements that will enhance your learning experience and better prepare you for your future career.

Working as a play therapist is an immensely rewarding and enriching career. This MSc in Play Therapy will teach you how to work safely and therapeutically with children and families with complex needs. The course is a collaboration between With Kids (a Scottish charity) and the MSc Art Psychotherapy at QMU.

Studies show that 20% of children have some form of emotional, behaviour, or mental health problem that can prevent them from fulfilling their full potential. Furthermore, children who experience mental health issues can go on to develop serious mental health issues as adults. Play therapy provides an opportunity for children experiencing emotional and behavioural issues to work through difficult experiences and feelings with a trained therapist and enabling a more positive outcome.

The key purpose of the profession of play therapy is defined by the British Association of Play Therapists (BAPT):

‘Play therapy is the dynamic process between child and play therapist in which the child explores at his or her own pace and with his or her own agenda those issues, past and current, conscious and unconscious, that are affecting the child’s life in the present. The child’s inner resources are enabled by the therapeutic alliance to bring about growth and change. Play therapy is child-centered, in which play is the primary medium and speech is the secondary medium.’

This innovative course is structured to develop your skills through a variety of modules and learning experiences. You will gain a thorough understanding of the fundamental inter-relatedness of the theory of a child’s physical, social and emotional world, and will develop the skills to work effectively and therapeutically to enhance emotional wellbeing and transform life chances. You will work directly with children and families with increasing complexity on practice placement over the three years and this will include clinical observation of a child/children from infanthood to primary.