Drama Therapist MSc – Advanced Clinical Practitioner - Level 7

Therapy

You'll use the healing aspects of drama and theatre to help people explore and reflect on their feelings. You'll offer people the opportunity to change by experimenting with different ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Skills and knowledge

To become an Advanced Clinical Practitioner in Dramatherapy you will need:

  • creative, flexible, and resourceful
  • resilient in dealing with other people’s strong emotions
  • sensitive and mature
  • able to show theatre skills and ideas
  • able to improvise
  • communicate clearly with a wide range of people
  • able to reflect on your emotions
  • counselling skills including active listening and a non-judgemental approach
  • knowledge of the fine arts
  • knowledge of psychology
  • the ability to work well with others
  • patience and the ability to remain calm in stressful situations
  • to be flexible and open to change
  • excellent verbal communication skills
  • to be able to carry out basic tasks on a computer or hand-held device
  • practical drama experience - voluntary or paid experience in helping people to deal with issues like mental health

Qualifications

You will need a postgraduate qualification in dramatherapy, accredited by the British Association of Dramatherapists / Psychotherapist MSC and be working as a dramatherapy practitioner.

Routes into this job

You may be able to do an arts therapist degree apprenticeship.

You'll usually need a qualification and experience in art, drama or music to apply.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

To do this apprenticeship, you'll need:

a degree in a relevant subject for a degree apprenticeship

You'll need to complete a postgraduate qualification in dramatherapy, accredited by the British Association of Dramatherapists.

To apply, you'll need a first degree in a subject like:

drama
creative therapies
psychology
You may also be able to apply if you've got a degree in a related subject, like occupational therapy, nursing or social work.

You'll be expected to have:

practical drama experience
voluntary or paid experience in helping people to deal with issues like mental health

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

You'll usually need:

a degree in a relevant subject for postgraduate study

You'll need paid or voluntary experience of working in the community on drama projects, in youth work, or with people with disabilities or mental health issues.

You could contact the voluntary services co-ordinator at your local NHS trust for further advice.

You can also find volunteering opportunities through The National Council for Voluntary Organisations and Do IT.

Career progression

You could specialise to work with a particular type of client such as children, the elderly, or offenders. Or you could become a specialist in a particular issue such as dementia, mental health, or palliative care.


You could decide to become self-employed and build up a private practice. You could do this alongside employed work.


With experience, you could become a senior or consultant dramatherapist, managing the work of a team of therapists. You could become the head of an arts therapy department, coordinating the work of therapists from other disciplines such as music or art therapy. You might also train other dramatherapists.