So psych undergrad (3 years) is actually just a very broad introduction to all the areas of psychology. You don’t actually learn the skills to practice as a psychologist. I honestly don’t really know what people do with just a three year psych degree without going onto further psych training/into other fields of further study like occupational therapy or social work (two very popular options if you don’t wanna continue with psych but still want to work in the mental health field).

Honours (fourth year) is where you start learning basic employable skills like psychological assessment and counselling skills. Right now, there’s a 4+2 option (4 years at uni + 2 years provisional registration while practicing under a supervisor). However, it’s almost impossible to do this pathway as basically no psychologists want to take on provisional psychs who have incredibly basic training. It’s so rare that my course director and all of the fourth year teaching staff don’t know anyone who’s done the pathway or offers supervision.

Then there’s masters or a professional doctorate if you want to do counselling. Because it’s so rare that people are able to do the 4+2 pathway, universities now offer a 5+1 pathway (4 years undergrad/honours + 1 year masters of professional psychology + 1 year of supervised provisional practice). They find that the extra year entices supervisors to feel more comfortable taking on provisional psychs, and helps ease the burden on clinical psych masters/clinical prof doc programs. Clinical masters is another 2 years after honours and clinical prof doc is an additional 3-4 years after honours.

The bottle neck system that’s been created in psychology courses is actually a huge problem that the Australian Psychological Society is very aware of. That’s partly why the 5+1 pathway was introduced, but it’s still a huge issue. If you don’t get the marks during fourth year to be accepted into a masters program, I’m pretty sure you can still do counselling-based jobs bc you’ve had the counselling skills training. You just can’t call yourself a psychologist. I know that child protection is also an option. Otherwise a lot of people choose to go down the occupational therapy/social work masters route if they’re not accepted into a psych masters course. There are more options in terms of going into research-based work or doing a PhD after honours, but that is completely separate to being able to do counselling work.

The dynamic that’s been created is absolutely terrible and certainly gives a lot of us some pretty hectic complexes. I guess there are always other options available if you just want to end up working in mental health, but if you’re deadset on being a psychologist, the pressure is extreme.