Curriculum & Requirements

The MA program requires full-time resident study and should be completed within two years.

• PSYC 537 – Ethics & Professional Issues in Clinical Psychology
• PSYC 541 – Introduction to Psychotherapy
• PSYC 542 – Cognitive/Behavioural Interventions
• PSYC 530 – Assessment: Critical Survey
• PSYC 531 – Assessment: Clinical Applications
• PSYC 560 – Clinical Research Design
• PSYC 534 – Clinical Practicum
• PSYC 545 – Advanced StatisticsMA
• 3 credits of PSYC courses outside the Clinical area
• Thesis (18 credits)

In addition, students are required to attend the Case Conference / Professional Issues Seminar in both years of the MA program. Please note, certain students may be required to complete additional courses or other undertakings because of deficiencies in their preparatory background; these requirements are specified by the program in coordination with the Graduate Student Progress Committee in writing during the first term of the student’s residence in the program.

Note: Students completing the MA program must apply for acceptance into the PhD program; acceptance depends upon the quality of the master’s-level work.

Full academic year residency is required for PhD students until the attainment of candidacy.

• 3 credits of advanced assessment (e.g,. Child Assessment, Neuropsychological Assessment)
• 3 credits of psychopathology (e.g., Psychopathology of the Child, Psychopathology of the Adult)
• 3 credits of advanced intervention (e.g., Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Treatment of Child Disorders, Motivational Interviewing)
• 3 credits of quantitative methods
• PSYC 534 – Clinical Psychology Practicum
• 3 to 6 credits of PSYC courses outside the Clinical area
• Community-based practica sufficient to achieve program objectives and reflect readiness for residency (300-600 hours of direct, face-to-face client contact)
• Comprehensive examination
• Dissertation
• CPA- or APA-accredited internship

In addition, all students and faculty are expected to attend the Clinical Lunch speaker series (periodically from September to April). This series is designed to bring faculty and students together in a casual setting to promote a sense of community and shared learning. The topics are varied; past events in this series have focused on psychopathology or interventions with adults or children.

At least one of the advanced clinical courses (assessment, psychopathology, or intervention) must focus on children (i.e., PSYC 532 Child Assessment, PSYC 536 Psychopathology of the Child, or PSYC 556 Treatment of Child Disorders). Students are also required to demonstrate satisfactory knowledge of historical foundations of psychology through prior undergraduate work or completing a book report on the topic.

To accomplish the general objectives of the program, the plan of MA and PhD study includes a series of clinical and non-clinical courses and practica supervised by professional psychologists in university and community agencies.

In the first year, students gain basic clinical knowledge and skills to prepare them for practica in subsequent years. In the second and third academic years, students carry out clinical work under the direct supervision of departmental clinical faculty. In the second and third years of the PhD program, students engage in advanced practica in community settings to prepare them for internship and beyond. Students generally attend residency during their fourth or fifth year of the PhD program.

As students progress through the program, they engage in ongoing assessment of their developing competencies reflecting broad and general training in clinical psychology as well as specialization in the student’s area(s) of interest. Program requirements are designed to ensure that students acquire sufficient breadth of training. In consultation with their research supervisor, students may also plan additional experiences to supplement development of relevant competencies.

The UBC Psychology Clinic serves many of the Clinical Program’s training and research needs. The Clinic operates throughout the year, providing assessment and psychotherapy services to members of the community. Several practicum teams function within the Clinic, allowing students to gain experience with diverse treatment issues and modalities of intervention. The Clinic also supports interaction with members of the professional community, hosting a variety of speakers and promoting clinical workshops.

The Clinic provides training in cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, motivational, and psychodynamic therapy to treat addictive and impulse control disorders, anxiety disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, behaviour problems of childhood (e.g., bedwetting, school refusal), eating disorders, interpersonal problems, mood disorders, oppositional defiant disorder, perfectionism and other personality-related maladjustment, psychophysiological disorders (e.g., headache, hypertension), and somatoform disorders. Training in neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation may also be available in the Clinic.

In our program and training clinic, we are committed to training that ensures that graduate students develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to work effectively with members of the public who embody a variety of demographics, attitudes, beliefs, and values. Consistent with this principle, we do not allow discrimination on the basis of age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or socioeconomic status in the services provided. Students should expect to work with clients who differ from themselves in various ways during their training.

When graduate students’ attitudes, beliefs, or values create tensions that negatively impact the training process or their ability to effectively treat members of the public, the program faculty and clinical supervisors are committed to a developmental training approach that is designed to support the acquisition of broad professional competence in working with clients/patients from diverse populations. Because students will have to navigate these sorts of clinical situations in their future careers, the program aims to prepare students to do so in a safe and ethical manner.

For some trainees, integrating personal beliefs or values with professional competence in working with all clients/patients may require additional time and faculty support. Ultimately though, to complete our program successfully, all graduate students must be able to work, within the limits of their competence, with any client placed in their care in a safe and ethical manner consistent with the protections afforded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Professional competencies are determined by the profession for the benefit and protection of the public; consequently, students do not have the option to avoid working with particular client populations or refuse to develop professional competencies because of conflicts with their attitudes, beliefs, or values.

Students follow a programmatic sequence of clinical training of increasing complexity:

1. In the first year, students prepare the foundations of clinical training by taking Introduction to Psychotherapy, two Assessment courses, and a course in Ethical and Professional Issues in Clinical Psychology. Formal supervised clinical practicum training begins in the second year. Students are required to take Clinical Psychology Practicum (PSYC534) in both MA2 and PhD1 years.
2. After completing two years of practicum training in the UBC Psychology Clinic (PSYC 534), students are required to do additional practica in community settings to broaden their clinical competencies. Before applying to residency, our program requires students to complete at least 300 hours of supervised practicum training in direct, face-to-face client contact, across all practicum experiences. Our program guideline is that students should obtain around 1,000 total practicum training hours (including direct contact, supervision, and indirect hours), consistent with the 2023 CPA Accreditation Standards.
3. A year-long residency in a CPA- or APA-accredited setting must be completed prior to awarding of the PhD. Students must be approved by the clinical program as ready for internship before they are eligible to apply. Prior to applying, students must complete all required courses, their comprehensive exams, and dissertation proposal. Students must also have their dissertation data collected prior to applying for residency so they will be in a position to complete the dissertation prior to beginning residency. For program approval to apply to residency, students must have completed the history of psychology requirement and must demonstrate broad-based competencies in relation to program objectives for clinical, professional, and scientific knowledge and skills.

All students in the clinical psychology program are required to demonstrate substantial understanding of the historical and scientific foundations of general psychology. This material is presented in most courses, particularly those didactic courses that satisfy breadth requirements for clinical students.

Students may meet this requirement by taking either PSYC 500 or PSYC 312, the upper-level undergraduate course UBC offers on this topic (or an equivalent course from another university). Another option is that students may prepare a 2-3 page report on a book that covers the breadth of scientific psychology, its history of thought and development, including research methods and applications, as well as its achievements and harms. The Handbook for the Doctoral Programme in Clinical Psychology (login required) has a list of examples of appropriate books as well as details for how to obtain a waiver of this requirement based on previous university coursework.

The Clinical program employs an apprenticeship approach to research training. Each student is selected for their compatibility of research interests with a faculty member. The major theoretical perspectives represented in faculty interests are behavioural, cognitive, social learning, interpersonal and neurocognitive. The student will work closely with their research supervisor throughout their graduate program on various research projects.

The system is designed to expose students to clinical research early in their graduate training and to equip them with the necessary research skills for conducting the Master’s thesis and developing a program of research. The M.A. thesis should be completed by the summer of the second year. All research conducted at UBC must be approved by the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board.

In addition to the apprenticeship training, a firm academic background in clinical research design and methodology is provided in first year coursework including Clinical Research Design and Advanced Statistics. Students orally present the results of their first research efforts (typically the MA thesis) at a departmental mini-conference (known as PsychFest), which usually occurs during the first week of May. It is quite possible that students’ research interests may change through the course of their graduate training. If students would like to switch research advisors or become involved in additional research with other faculty members, they should discuss this with all parties concerned.

Students are also encouraged to explore the possibility of collaboration with faculty in other areas of the Department who may have interests that overlap with the students’ areas of interest. To provide a sense of research in the clinical program, below are some examples of titles of recent graduates’ dissertation titles:

• Temporal associations between eating disorder behaviours and suicidal thoughts: An ecological momentary assessment study
• Modelling product risk and gambling harms in online gambling
• Parent engagement in parenting interventions for children with ADHD: The role of parent mental health
• Sociocontextual factors impacting the biological embedding of major transitions during adolescence
• Understanding hoarding clean-outs: A public scholar approach
• Memory network of social anxiety

During both MA2 and PhD1, students are assigned to a practicum team (PSYC 534) based in the UBC Psychology Clinic. Each team usually consists of approximately two students who are supervised by a clinical faculty member, and students typically begin to see clients early in the course of the first practicum. Students are assigned to a different team for the second year of practicum.

The aim is to provide students with a broad range of therapy experience (e.g., children, adults) to establish a foundation of clinical skills from which they can proceed with community-based practica and internship. Clinical Case Conferences also provide students with the opportunity to prepare and deliver case presentations concerning their ongoing clinical caseload.

Students generally gain supervised practicum training at several community sites across the years of their doctoral program. These placements occur in settings that have training as part of their overall mission; the student is supervised by PhD-level licensed psychologists.

The sites of the practica vary from year to year as placement is dependent on funding, the availability of supervisors and student interests. Examples of recent local practicum sites include:

• BC Children’s Hospital
• Back in Motion Rehabilitation Centre
• Burnaby General Hospital – Older Adult Mental Health Team
• Carlisle Youth Concurrent Disorders Centre
• Cornerstone – Camp Brave
• Maples Adolescent Treatment Centre
• Royal Columbian Hospital (neuropsychology)
• Vancouver CBT Centre
• West Coast Centre for Sex Therapy

A Practicum/Internship night is held each year to facilitate an exchange of information between students and local agencies, and potential practicum students are strongly encouraged to attend.

One of the requirements for the Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology is a year-long residency at a health or mental health agency accredited by the Canadian Psychological Association or an equivalent accrediting body, such as the American Psychological Association. Students must be approved by the clinical program as ready for residency before they are eligible to apply.

In addition to completing all required courses, the history of psychology requirement, and all data collection for their dissertation, students must also demonstrate broad-based competencies in relation to program objectives for clinical, professional, and scientific knowledge and skills.

If a student does not match the first time they apply, in subsequent application years they must continue to apply to accredited internships. However, they may also seek approval from the clinical area to apply to residency programs that are APPIC members but not accredited. In seeking this area approval prior to applying, the student must provide the area with documentation that clearly outlines how the nonaccredited internship satisfies the standards of an accredited internship. These standards are available on CPA’s website and can be used as a template to document how the internship fulfills these standards. The basic message is that even a nonaccredited residency must be substantially equivalent to an accredited one for it to meet degree requirements for our program.

Students in our program have recently been placed in the following residency programs:

• Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON
• Edmonton Consortium Clinical Psychology Residency, Edmonton, AB
• Vancouver Coastal Health, Vancouver, BC
• Joseph’s Healthcare, Hamilton ON
• Alberta Children’s Hospital, Calgary, AB
• Royal Ottawa Healthcare Group, Ottawa, ON
• Fraser Health Authority, New Westminster, BC
• Waterloo Region Psychology Consortium, Waterloo, ON