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Originally from Mumbai, India, Dhun Hemal Mehta chose ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ for MSc Health Psychology after completing an undergraduate psychology degree.

After graduating in 2025, she talks about what she feels makes the subject unique, what the placement during her degree taught her, and starting her career with a local youth centre.

What makes health psychology special?

When I was younger, I actually wanted to become an interior designer! But then I completely shifted to psychology once we learnt about it at college. After doing my undergraduate in India, I decided to focus on health psychology.

Health psychology is not that prevalent in India — and mental health is still a taboo — so it was quite a different aspect of the whole field. I covered some clinical and counselling aspects during my bachelor's, and I wanted to explore something new and gain a more global perspective.

In my family, I have people who have had physical illnesses that affected their mental health, so I could see first-hand that the mind and body are connected when it comes to what makes us healthy or ill. We know that when we are stressed, we can have physical symptoms, and vice versa.

Health psychology really captures that dynamic when it comes to studying things like addiction, diabetes, or children with physical illnesses and how that affects their mental health. Even though I plan to go into clinical psychology, it was good to have this holistic understanding of how the mind and body work together.

Studying at ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ

¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ has been a dream come true, to be honest. I’d heard quite a lot about the university from alumni, and as I’m quite active on social media, I networked on LinkedIn and even university groups.

The tag line ‘Belong at ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ’ couldn’t have been more true for me. As soon as you arrive, you feel like you belong — it's a really friendly environment. ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ has a lovely campus, so you don’t really feel like you’re working. Everyone, including the professors, was very helpful and the Student Support team was always available.

I tried to go to as many clubs and events as possible, like the Indian Dance or Hindu Society – even things like stargazing! There's so much to the city that you never get tired of it. The Christmas markets, the Roman ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æs, trying out new cafés. It's such a lovely city to live in and I've made some amazing friends within a span of just a year.

¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ is also one of the top-ranked universities globally when it comes to psychology, so it was easy enough to decide that the UK and ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ specifically were the right place for me. Studying abroad and living independently is a great experience, and it helps you become more non-judgmental and open-minded, which is valuable when you’re working in mental health! It's very important that you have access to different cultures and different people so that you can understand how other people think.

Gaining practical experience and research skills

The placement was definitely the highlight of the course, and it was another factor that made me choose ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ in the first place.

I got hands-on experience working on a research project within the Department of Psychology and could see how that research is actually going to help people. We looked at developmental language disorder, which was an eye-opening experience and gave me real insights into how the University aims to bring about societal change.

Generally, the assignments that we were given throughout the course were very practically oriented, like designing public policy suggestions. It was a very good mixture of theory and practical, which I really liked.

Building a career

I’m currently working in a mental health organisation in ¶¹°ü³ÉÈË°æ itself called Youth Connect South West. I get to support young people who are suffering from a wide range of conditions like seizures, chronic fatigue, anxiety, autism, or learning difficulties, and may have special educational needs. It's very much relevant to what I have studied!

I’m aiming to stay in my role for a couple of years so that I can get more hands-on experience and then maybe proceed to do a PhD. For now, I want to actually work with people and apply what I learnt in my master’s.

My advice for future students

There is always an aspect of self-study when you are a master’s student. So, you have to make sure that your concepts are clear, but there is also a lot of help available, be it independent one-on-one sessions with your academic supervisor or mental health support.

Be confident. Be open to learning new things, maybe even apply for that placement that sounds slightly out of your comfort zone. Either way, you will have a great time and learn plenty of new things.