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Postgraduate Course

Graduate Certificate Specialist Adult Mental Health

(Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner)

Graduate Certificate Specialist Adult Mental Health
The details
Specialist Adult Mental Health (Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner)
October 2025
Full-time
1 year
Colchester Campus

The Specialist Adult Mental Health course aims to support and develop trainee Mental Health Wellbeing Practitioners (MHWPs) in their knowledge and understanding of the complexities of severe mental health problems.

You will learn how to deliver a range of wellbeing-focused, psychologically informed, interventions and coordinate care plans for adults. The course will generate understanding of the purpose of collaborative care planning, and how to work alongside other members of the multi-disciplinary team, as well as families.

Specialists in the School of Health and Social Care will facilitate your understanding of mental health theory and practice and guide you to develop a critical knowledge of the theoretical and research literature relating to wellbeing interventions. You will study adaptable clinical management in our mock wards, and hone your collaboration and decision-making competencies in groups simulating clinical cases.

To practice working as a safe practitioner within a community setting, you will have direct contact with patients and other practitioners on placement. As a trainee MHWP you will learn about how to support personal recovery and promote hope and connectedness and will gain a greater understanding of issues of culture and diversity within mental health.

Our expert staff

A unique feature of our School is that many of our staff work with local NHS Trusts and other local agencies, which enhances our grasp of the contemporary links between academic research, the major issues of the day and practice.

We specialise in applied, multidisciplinary research that addresses issues of national and international concern to health and social care policy and practice and related fields. We also host the NIHR Research Design Service for the East of England.

Specialist facilities

The School of Health and Social Care is located at two sites; in the Kimmy Eldridge building at our Colchester campus and in the Gateway Building at our Southend campus. Delivering the course across two campuses means that we have small, interactive classes to create a stronger learning environment.

We have purpose-built new consultation rooms with windows for group assessments. We offer excellent physical and online resources in terms of libraries, computer labs, data-sets, archives and other research materials.

Our dedicated support tutor will help to develop your academic literacy and clinical numeracy skills. This helps you apply these critically important areas of study to real life situations.

Your future

This course has been designed in line with the demand for psychological professional roles in England, UK.

At Essex we pride ourselves on being a welcoming and inclusive student community. We offer a wide range of support to individuals and groups of student members who may have specific requirements, interests or responsibilities.

Find out more

The University makes every effort to ensure that this information on its programme specification is accurate and up-to-date. Exceptionally it can be necessary to make changes, for example to courses, facilities or fees. Examples of such reasons might include, but are not limited to: strikes, other industrial action, staff illness, severe weather, fire, civil commotion, riot, invasion, terrorist attack or threat of terrorist attack (whether declared or not), natural disaster, restrictions imposed by government or public authorities, epidemic or pandemic disease, failure of public utilities or transport systems or the withdrawal/reduction of funding. Changes to courses may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will also keep students informed appropriately by updating our programme specifications. The University would inform and engage with you if your course was to be discontinued, and would provide you with options, where appropriate, in line with our Compensation and Refund Policy.

The full Procedures, Rules and Regulations of the University governing how it operates are set out in the Charter, Statutes and Ordinances and in the University Regulations, Policy and Procedures.

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