Petition Against the Discontinuation of Psychotherapy, Mental Health & Counselling Training Programmes at the University of Kent

We are writing to you with regard to the decision of closure of psychotherapy, counselling and mental health programmes at the University of Kent. We strongly believe that this decision is in the detriment of not only the directly involved parties such as ourselves, the students, and our department representatives but most importantly the service users, those in need of psychotherapeutic and mental health help. These courses are very highly regarded and we all feel privileged to be a part of such a well structured and involved programme, something of paramount importance in any related professional training. We all feel passionate about our potential future involvement in the specialised sector and feel that we should at least be allowed to complete our final academic target, either the Masters or the Doctorate programme. We find that this decision was made inopportunely soon after the beginning of what represents the first step from a four or five year training for most of us and feel rather deceived and disappointed of being let down at this early stage by such a respected university of which we expected the same commitment we offered in return. We, the students, have the support of our department’s academic and administrative, the Canterbury Consortium of Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychotherapists (CCOPPP) and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) who have offered their guidance and agree with the opposition of this decision. We believe that we should at least be permitted to complete the programmes that made us join the University of Kent, which are Masters and respectively Doctorate taking into account that our enrolling directly onto these programmes was not available to us when we applied. We are seeking the reversal of this decision and hope that a decision favourable to psychotherapy and mental health programmes can ensue. Yours sincerely, Julia Crudu Student Representative Psychotherapy Studies