Compare & Contrast: Irish Vs UK Psychology Training

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Get ready as we dive into the fascinating world of psychology with a Celtic twist. We are going on a cross country road trip as we compare and contrast how Ireland and the UK train and qualify their counselling psychologists, but that's not all. We're also spilling the Barry's tea on how you can or cannot travel and work internationally once you're a qualified psychologist. So grab your favourite cup. Stay tuned and I hope you find this really useful.

(: 00:37

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. My name is Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Thank you so much for choosing me to help you learn more about the world of psychology and mental health. Do please come along and download my free guide for the DClinPsy, which is a doctorate in clinical psychology, which also includes lots of useful tips and guidance for anyone embarking on professional psychology applications. You can do that by coming along to my website, www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk, and then check out the free resources option. You can also click any of the links in my show notes or any of the links in my social media. Come and follow me everywhere. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent. Let's dive in and meet our guest for today. Hi, I just want to welcome our guest for today, Dr. Leora DeFlumere. Hi.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 01:32

Hi. It's so good to be here this morning. How are you, Marianne?

Dr Marianne Trent (: 01:36

I'm really well, thank you. So thank you for connecting with me. We connected on Instagram this time, didn't we? And we got to chatting in the DMS about whether a podcast episode might be really interesting and I think it will be. So we're going to be talking about kind of all things today, but qualifying and training in Ireland living, working in Ireland. But also I think you said originally that you were born in America and then moved over from the states to Ireland. So we're going to kind of talk about that and we're going to talk about individual differences between what we think might be the Irish programme for counselling psychology and the UK programme. And I thought it was about time we did an episode with someone based in Ireland who is working there because actually my second biggest audience for the podcast is in Ireland. So delighted to have you here.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 02:27

I'm delighted to be here and I'm not surprised that is the second largest audience. There is so much overlap between people who are qualifying in Ireland and the uk. We go back and forth a fair bit.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 02:36

Yeah, good. Well, one of the first differences I've noticed already is that you mentioned in our pre-chat about the HSE. Could you tell us a little bit about the HSC and how that differs from the NHS if indeed it does?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 02:52

Great question. So I am not an expert, I suppose in the HSCI work in private practise at the moment. I did complete my placements during my training, primarily within the HSC, actually all within the HSC. So my placements were in adult mental health and primary care for children, adolescents, families, all that stuff. And also some assessment work in there. And then my third year placement was in psycho-oncology in a HSE hospital. The reason why I paused there is because it wasn't kind of your typical psychologist training practicum or placement opportunity, but it wasn't a HSE hospital, so it was more acute hospital treatment setting. So the difference is I have not worked in the NHS. I do not know a whole lot about it in the hsc. I just have my placement experiences. So the HSE is, it takes an MDT approach. I'll just outline kind of what I'm aware of about the HSE and you let me know where the differences are. I suppose we take an MDT approach. It is psychiatrist led. That's slowly changing where psychologists are taking on a little bit more leadership within each team. Every team is going to have an occupational therapist, it's going to have an SLT, it's going to have all those people in the allied health services that are working together under the leadership of a psychiatrist. Is it psychiatrist led within the NHS typically or do psychologists lead psychological teams? Cause I've wondered that.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 04:20

It tends to be so it has traditionally been that way, but it is changing and there are some psychology led teams or even nurse led teams. But generally speaking, in the most part, certainly in inpatient units, I would say in the most part it's still psychiatry led, but not exclusively.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 04:42

So I'm trying to think about other potential differences that there might be. The differences for the people who are going to be listening to this podcast, I suppose, would be that recently counselling psychologists have received funding from the HSC. So that means that you're paid a salary as you would be for clinical psychology training programmes in both the UK and in Ireland. Basically what that means is that you are supposed to work for the HSC as counselling psychologist and as clinical psychologist in those first couple of years, post qualification, which I believe is the same in the uk, that there is kind of an expectation that you might work within a public health service.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 05:21

There isn't actually. So when you do your training in clinical psychology, they're offering you a fixed term period of employment as a trainee clinical psychologist, but there's no prerequisite that you must work in the NHS post qualification. Obviously they are hoping you will, but certainly in my case, when I qualified in 2011, there were no jobs available and so I was unemployed for a period of time. And so whilst that has changed now and now usually people are getting jobs even when they're in their last year of training. It was bleak times and it was like I did do a little bit of research work and stuff for myself, but I was fortunate I was able to get an NHS role, but you're not contracted to say that I will work for this period of time. I wonder if that might change ultimately, because as private practise becomes more and more popular and more and more viable and people think about the work-life balance that's perhaps afforded from doing that, I wonder if that will change. But currently that's not the case.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 06:28

So in Ireland, there would be kind of the expectation for clinical psychology, clinical psychologist once you complete your programme that you would be working for the HSE for a little bit. Again, I'm not a clinical psychologist, so I haven't looked at the contracts. I don't know whether that's pressure that people fall into and people don't want to, people don't want to step on toes or whether it is actually contractually obligated. Cancelling psychology trainees have only received funding in the past six months to a year. Prior to that, it was entirely self-funded doctoral programmes. It was like in the uk, incredibly competitive to get into these training programmes. We're talking, I think that the numbers were, there were 480 applicants the year that I applied to about 45 to 50 slots available around the country in clinical training programmes for the counselling training programme. I think that it was 150 applicants for my cohort, which took in 14.

(: 07:32

So again, it's similarly competitive. There are similar expectations to my understanding of working in relevant settings beforehand, and then you're put on this three year professional doctoral training programme. Within the counselling doctoral programme, you're expected to do a research PhD level piece of research. So you're held to the proper viva. It's not that you're doing a doctoral service project, you're doing a full dissertation, which would be a difference, I suppose, between the counselling psychology doctorate and the clinical psychology doctorate. To my understanding here, I hope that that answers some questions. At least there are lots of differences.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 08:16

Yeah, I mean the one that will be very exciting for our listeners if they're based in the UK is the idea that actually you guys have managed to secure paid funding for cancelling. So I'd imagine that the rates of applicants will go up considerably now in Ireland for cancelling, because I don't know why this has perpetuated in the uk. It doesn't seem fair for me. They're often advertising qualified band seven clinical or counselling psychologists. They're essentially saying, it's fine, you can do the same job. So why the inequity? It's not right

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 08:57

To my understanding. So there's been a lot of work behind the scenes here in Ireland to secure that funding for the past, honestly, 15, 20 years going on to my understanding, there is an understanding within the healthcare providers that are trainings are so comparable. You and I were even discussing in our pre-chat there that in Ireland, it sounds like counselling psychologists receive even more similar training to clinical psychologists than counselling psychologists would. In the UK where we receive placement opportunities from childhood all the way up through adulthood or encourage to take on older adult placements, we have a multitude of placements. Some people do ID placements, you really receive comparable training. But from my understanding, it's that HR hasn't really understood that the two programmes are similar. Genuinely, I've heard that there is just this little delay in being, oh wait, do have a lack of qualified providers who could actually help people with their mental health.

(: 09:56

And we have this entirely untapped group of psychologists who are coming out every year. We only got that funding recently, so that means that many of us would go into more private sector work. If you did qualify before this group, this cohort that's just starting in now, that being said, many counselling psychologists work in the public health service of my friends. The majority are working in the HSE. A couple are working in the Irish Prison Service. There's incredible work happening within the Irish Prison service that counselling psychologists are specifically well suited to perform, in my opinion. But also a lot of people in private work like myself.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 10:38

It's just really interesting. It's really useful and it almost seems like Ireland get it more than the UK do at the moment. So I think certainly some of the work that one of my colleagues Dr. Tara Quin is doing, she's absolutely demonstrating her capabilities as a qualified counselling psychologist. She does lots of work in the media, but I think even in our disciplines as a clinical psychologist, it's only really in the last few years we've realised how similar they are. Can I ask what might feel like quite a naive question. So in the NHS, you in essence get free at the point of delivery healthcare from cradle to grave. Is that the same with the HSE?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 11:23

That's the promise. Is it the delivery? I don't know. Yeah.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 11:28

So it's funded by taxpayers in the same way as the NHS, is it?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 11:32

Yes. You have access in terms of mental health care, you have access to public mental health care your whole life. That being said, waiting lists are very, very tricky and very long comparably, I think in Wexford, so I'm in Wicklow, which is just south of Dublin. Wexford is just the county south of that. Wexford had very, very long waiting lists last year. I think that we're talking like 18 month to two year waiting list for child's mental health service. And obviously people do age out then, and it gets quite tricky in terms of assessments, in terms of assessment of needs. Does somebody need to go for specific assessments? It gets really tricky quite quickly. So yes, that's the promise

Dr Marianne Trent (: 12:14

Is the delivery. And is HSE only mental healthcare or do they do broken legs

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 12:19

And No, no, no, no. It's everything. It's everything. HSE is the health body for everything. So it's mental health care, it's fiscal healthcare, it's cancer care, it's everything. But you also can opt into the private sector. You can opt into the private sector for all of those services as well, which is the same in the uk.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 12:37

Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Just in case our listeners, obviously we're in Ireland, you absolutely get this, but I think part of my role as a mental health and psychology advocate is to help illuminate what's happening just over that small patch of water. Absolutely. I find it baffling really with Northern Island, literally, you could be living next door to someone that is seen by the NHS or is training in the NHS, and you are with the HSE. I find that bonkers.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 13:15

It's wild. I've heard it's easier to access treatment in the NHS. There are. I'm thinking back to people in my master. So prior to my doctoral training, two people from my master's are currently training at Oxford in the clinical psychology doctoral programme. There are lots of people who choose to go the UK route just because there are so many more universities that do offer clinical training programmes and counselling psychology doctoral programmes. So I very much understand that over here in Ireland, we're a much smaller country, we're much smaller. We're 5 million people, but that's it.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 13:53

I was over in Galway for the Irish Psychological Society Conference in September, and I absolutely loved it and I loved that it felt so much smaller. It is, and everyone was so friendly. I felt like I was a natural born Irish woman. Everyone was so friendly and chatty, and I was like, these are my people.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 14:15

One of the perks of being in a smaller country is that we are a smaller network. So people who are working just over the border in Wexford, people who are working for Jigsaw, which is our young people's mental health service, that makes it even easier for people 18 to 26 to access care people who are working in all of these different services. It's very easy to find your feet here in Ireland and to come at home professionally, to be honest.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 14:47

So with the whole Brexit situation, has made it trickier for people in Ireland to come over to the uk? Or is that still as easy or straightforward as it ever was?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 14:59

As easy as it ever was, and will continue to be indefinitely. British universities to my understanding, are treating Irish applicants as though they're applying from within the uk. So that means that you qualify for, if you're going to a programme that's fee paying, you qualify for in UK fees, which is great. I'm not sure, because I don't know personally, I haven't actually asked people about whether they're able to take on the role of trainee clinical psychologist. I assume you are if you are Irish, because if you're Irish, you're allowed to work in the UK with no work permit,

Dr Marianne Trent (: 15:38

Then that would probably meet the threshold then for you to be able to get paid by the NHS. Yeah, okay. Alright, that's brilliant.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 15:45

So there really is fluidity, and there's also British Psychological Society also basically says if you're chartered with the PSI Psychological Society of Ireland, it's a really smooth application process to get those qualifications mutually recognised both ways because they understand we have a land border. People drive up and down it all the time.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 16:07

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for illuminating that for us. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your early years. You were born in America, when did you move over to Ireland?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 16:21

So I have only been here for six years now. So I was born and raised in America. Sometimes people can't really tell with my accent, but sometimes people when I say it, they go, ah, yeah,

Dr Marianne Trent (: 16:35

You sound Irish to me rather than American. I sound in the

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 16:39

It's, it's kind of in the middle. It's a bit embarrassing on both sides to be honest. So yeah, born and raised in the United States. North Carolina is where I grew up, which is in the south because that's confusing. And then I went to college in Massachusetts at Mount Holyoke College. Then I took a year to just kind of figure out what I wanted to do really. I did corporate consulting, kind of found my feet for a little bit, realised that I was not fulfilled.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 17:09

So did you do psychology in college in America?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 17:13

So I did a double major. So I did anthropology and I did psychology. So a lot of my anthropological research was doing field work, that kind of stuff. I was in Iceland for about three months, and then psychology, I followed what would be your pretty standard psychological training programme in the undergrad years. That being said, when I decided to come on over to Ireland, my wife had actually moved over to Ireland for her doctorate and then went back to America, met me. We were together for a couple of years and then I went, oh, I want to go to grad school. And she was like, oh, have you thought about Ireland? That's where all my friends in my twenties are. Let's think about it. When I applied for master's programmes, I applied to Trinity College, Dublin University College, Dublin, and to the University of Edinburgh.

(: 18:04

Obviously that one's not in Ireland. I just really like Edinburgh. I think it's a fantastic city. So I applied to those master's programmes. Edinburgh said, yes, absolutely, I'd love to have you. UCD went, oh, you have a double major. That means that you didn't study psychology. And I was like, oh, no, no, no. I actually, I have two bas. That is what a double major means is I have two bachelor's. I did two at the same time. And then they went, oh, no, no, no, that doesn't make sense. So I then asked them, I was like, oh, am I missing any specific courses? And they're like, oh, you have to go to the Psychological Society of Ireland to see if it's the same. So I went to the Psychological Society earlier, I contacted them and I was like, what am I missing here? Because I have all of the courses that are listed as what makes up a psychology bachelor's programme. And they were like, well, because you did the both, it's not the same as having done one. Sure.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 19:04

It makes you doubly good, doesn't it? That's how I would see that.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 19:07

You would think. So I was just very confused. Trinity had no issues with it, though. They understood the double major thing. Trinity would have a very large international student population. So I went to my master's there and then when I was applying to a doctorate in counselling psychology, they then had me go back to the PSI and be like, but did you actually receive your undergrad? We know you got your master's, but did you get your undergrad? So I actually, I knew the president of the Psychological Society of Ireland at the time. Again, very small world in Ireland professionally, which is great in many ways. It's very easy to find your people and to find your feet again. So I happened to know him and he was like, this is completely fine. Of course you've gotten your bachelor's. He had to write me a letter though basically saying that my undergrad counted and then I was able to do the doctorate.

(: 20:01

So it's really a story of just different countries having different systems of education. It's very tricky to transfer qualifications from America anywhere else. It's very tricky to transfer qualifications from Ireland, the UK to America. It just doesn't really happen because it's a state by state situation. Because we've completed our training programmes in the UK or in Ireland, though we have more flexibility. There is more understanding to my understanding of what those psychology programmes entail. So we could go fairly easily to Australia. We could go fairly easily to obviously the uk. There's just more flexibility within the anglophone world if you're not actually trading in America, which is very odd.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 20:52

I think the same is true for us. So we could go to New Zealand or Australia relatively easily, but I think basically if I went to America, I'd have to start again. I think that's generally I contact sort of what it would look like.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 21:06

So during Covid, we suffered a bereavement in the family, and I very much considered going back to America just to be closer to family. I contacted around 10 different states just being like, here's what my qualifications are. I have my undergrad, I have my master's, I have my doctorate. Here's what my doctorate was in. Here's exactly how it was received, all that stuff. Here's my professional experience. Here's what I'm doing now. Everything that you would want from a professional portfolio, and again, I'm as terminally qualified as you can be, and I was told in no uncertain terms by one state in particular that they would prefer to have me do an online doctorate programme that would cost me $70,000 a year for six years.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 21:56

Wow. So that gives us a cloud and clear, doesn't it? So even though your college education was America and you are an American citizen, presumably we're now with dual nationality for Ireland?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 22:11

Not quite yet, but very soon,

Dr Marianne Trent (: 22:12

Yes. Okay, alright. Yeah, that's just wild, isn't it? Come and study for another six years and give us all this money, then we might let you.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 22:24

It's state by state in America, and that's something that people don't recognise that I just might have stumbled into a particularly stringent state. They also did not accept any electronically delivered files. They said that I would have to bring in everything in paper format. Oh

Dr Marianne Trent (: 22:46

Wow.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 22:47

Maybe it was just a really tricky state. We'll see. There were two states that looked a little bit more amenable to international qualifications, and those were California and New York because my theory is that's where people would kind of live.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 23:02

It's where the movers and the shakers are my friend.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 23:06

Well, it's where, let's say if you have a partner who's in finance, or let's say you have a partner who's involved in Phil, or if you have a partner in tech, that's where they would have job opportunities. And of course there are many job opportunities elsewhere. America has many job opportunities. That's great. But there would be more international movement to the coastal areas generally.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 23:28

Great. Thank you so much. That's a really, really helpful discussion and it's not something we've discovered or discussed on the podcast before. Could you tell us a little bit about what you get up to now in your private practise?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 23:39

Yeah, absolutely. So I am working in private practise. I've been doing private practise for about a year and a half now. So I finished up my qualifications in 2022, and then I took maternity leave regarding my baby. I worked in assessment work with the adult autism practise for a little bit, and then I opened up my own private practise. So right now I specialise in working with people who are intending to become parents or people who are transitioning to parenthood. So I work specifically with people who are accessing fertility treatment queer families, honestly, families that are like my own because I don't know of many other psychologists who have that lived experience, experience. That being said, I work with people who are not queer or who have not accessed fertility treatment, and of course that work is lovely as well. But that is really the work that is most meaningful to me at this moment is working with people through matrescence.

(: 24:38

It typically is fans. I'm getting a lot of non gestational parents as well, which is really interesting to work with. So little research on non gestational mothers in particular. There's very little on it. I have a fair few dads who are coming to me as well. The research generally indicates that people want to work with female practitioners, and it's very rare for dads to go, oh, here's a female psychologist who actually has experience of being a non gestational parent to a child. Wow. So I do one-to-one work. I'm also launching during maternity leave. I want to give a lot of my time back, to be honest. So I'm doing weekly support groups or parents of newborns completely free of charge people in Ireland because it's not available. I'm doing monthly workshops for people who are going through pregnancy or the postnatal period. I'm trying to kind of fill in gaps that I have seen gaps in healthcare and in maternal mental healthcare in particular. Those solutions are there within our maturity hospitals. Our maturity hospitals have a lot of demands put on them. So if I can provide a solution in the private sector and have it be free, why not?

Dr Marianne Trent (: 25:52

Well done to you. Sounds like you're doing incredible work. And it made me think about really conscious connection to becoming a parent. And for many, many people it's something that just happens like that, but even if it does, it's still a lot to get your head around either during nine months or when you are waiting to welcome in your bundle of joy to your family. It's a big deal and it does change lives, and I was in discussion with someone recently about them not wanting a family, not wanting to be a parent. People can find that really tricky to get their heads around as well, even though it's none of their business. But yeah, sometimes people will have to or consider accessing counselling for that as well, just to validate their choice to do that. But I love the idea of what you are doing, which is actually really helping people make space for this massive change.

(: 26:50

So I think when people have children very young, I find in the clinical work I do that they've not really finished having their own youth themselves. One of my best friends would fully say that she was not done being a young person when she was then a mother. I think she had her son at like 21 or something. Sometimes people become in a position where they almost miss that they haven't had that and they weren't really ready to stop that journey. And so I think it is a big change going from being either single or in a committed relationship and then becoming a parent. It's a massive change.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 27:31

And what I see, I completely agree with you. What I see so much is that it's not a supportive change is that people have these scripts for how parenthood and family life should go, and those scripts hinge on having a supportive family environment. They hinge on having people around you and your friend network who understand what's going on. But there's a huge shift in even those friendship connections. Your whole life changes. The demands on your time change, your physical resources change. You have less sleep. You might be nourishing your body differently, your movement needs might be changing. All of those things that really underpin mental wellbeing get shaken up. So it gets really, really tricky. There are many people who are working in the scent space and then the transition to parenthood space. One thing that I feel really passionate about and that I don't see a lot of people doing is including fertility and trying to conceive within that maternal mental health space.

(: 28:28

Because many people, as they're assessing fertility treatment, they will experience very high highs. They will experience very low lows. There's loss, there's trauma history inherent to it. There's so much to reproductive trauma and fertility treatment would be considered clinically reproductive trauma. Even if fertility intervention is not experienced as capital T trauma, it would be considered reproductive trauma generally as with loss, as would miscarriage, as would all of these other things that so many people do experience on their pathways to becoming parents and that affect their parenting and their experience with their family. That being said, there is not readily available mental health care support for people going through fertility treatment or trying to conceive. It's only really when people conceive that all of a sudden there's this, oh, you're in a maternity hospital. Oh, there's a lovely part of mental health team that here, that's here to support you. I just don't see the fertility support being there as needed. Absolutely, and that's changing

Dr Marianne Trent (: 29:34

Important.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 29:35

It's available in some private clinics, but it's not necessarily offered to every couple. But I would argue that every couple should be getting fairly regular support if they're going through fertility treatment.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 29:47

Yeah. It was only, I think recently, I'm 42 currently. It was only on your recent social media post. I'm sure it was you that I learned of the word scent. It was not something I had heard of. It was not something I could spell. Could you a spell it for our audience and B, tell us what it is?

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 30:09

Absolutely. So M-A-T-R-E-S-C-E-N-C-E. So it's adolescence, which is the transition to adulthood, right? It's like that metres essence is the transition to motherhood. It basically is a word that encapsulates the massive hormonal physical lifestyle shifts that you're experiencing as you transition to having children having, typically, it is only targeted at moms and moms who were pregnant because it does consider hormonal shifts. It does consider physical shifts in terms of the postnatal body and all the identity changes that might come with that, and the body image concerns that many people have. Postnatally, there isn't really a word for rece. There isn't really a word for perce.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 30:58

No. Petre essence, no.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 31:00

There is patrescence, but I mean there's so little space, in my opinion, for men to come together and share experiences of fatherhood. It's very limited in social media, and that's because a lot of the default labour goes to women generally and to mothers. So there's very little available for rece. I have no idea what the word would be for a general gender neutral essence for people who are turning into parental. Maybe

Dr Marianne Trent (: 31:29

You should coin it. Maybe that should be your thing. Your thing. If people are interested in learning more about you and whether you do ever coin that term, where can they find you on socials? So

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 31:42

I am at the gentle psychologist on Instagram. That is where I kind of do everything. I have not downloaded TikTok. I think I'm too old to do it, but the gentle psychologist is where I am. I'm also on LinkedIn under my name, which is very unique. Thank you to my mother for that branding and for the impossible name, but that's okay.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 32:03

Say it once more for us. Say your beautiful name because I've fluffed it up at least four times in a row. When we first we're doing the intro,

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 32:12

It's Dr. Leora DeFlumere. Yeah, It sounds like a sneeze, but that's okay.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 32:20

I'll make sure that I link to all of this beautiful content and advice in my show notes. But before we finish, have you got your best piece of advice for aspiring psychologists to reduce burnout on their way to where they're getting to

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 32:35

Know why you want to do it and know what programme you want to do? I often have people come to me through a lot of LinkedIn messages, actually, which is interesting. I have people come to me saying, why did you do a counselling psychology doctoral programme? For me, the counselling modality was so radical and so impactful that it really kept me going through the application process. I love that counselling psychology is about putting people in their context and that it has an activism component to it, but it has this understanding of the systemic factors that underpin mental health concerns. I absolutely love it. I find it so deeply feminist in its approach while also obviously being incredibly evidence-based. I love it. I don't know that I would have been able to go through what I see so many people going through of those years of applying to doctoral programmes.

(: 33:33

For some people, if it wasn't a programme that I went, oh my God, I can see everything of myself in it. Write about why you want to do it. Write about why you want to do a doctoral programme and not a psychotherapy programme. Understand why you don't want to be a social worker, but why you want to be a psychologist. Understand what the doctoral part gives you. Do you want to do assessment work? Do you want to do research work? Do you want to do writing? Understand what all of it is. Without that, you'll be sitting there going, why didn't I do the minimum in order to work therapeutically with people? So it's a long road.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 34:13

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your beautiful compassion with us. So generously, it's been a real delight speaking to you and wishing you the very best of luck with everything that comes for you next as you become a family for very soon too.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 34:31

Yes. We have a baby incoming next week. Yep. Thank you so much. It's been absolutely lovely speaking to you, and I look forward to continuing to see what you're up to. This platform is so needed. I will absolutely be sharing it around Ireland as well.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 34:46

Oh, thank you so much. That's really, it's really lovely to meet you and do stay in touch.

Dr Leora DeFlumere (: 34:51

Absolutely. I'll do Alright. Bye bye-Bye, Marianne.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 34:54

What an absolute pleasure it was to speak to Dr. Leora. I hope that you found it a really interesting listen as well. Please do go and follow her as the gentle psychologist on Instagram, post some lovely content. So there's lots to continue to learn and appreciate there too. I think if I was an aspiring psychologist and I was footloose and fancy free, I loved Ireland when I was there in Galway, I might well have considered going and training there as either a clinical or a counselling psychologist if they would've had me. Especially now that we learn that it is actually a paid opportunity now in Ireland for counselling psychology. So maybe this gives us hope that there is change, possible counselling, psychology in the uk. Have you got any ideas for a podcast episode that you think would be really interesting? Please do get in contact with me. Please do. Pitch it to me. I will look forward to bringing the next episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast, which you can access usually about 10:00 AM on Saturdays on YouTube with each brand new MP three version being available from 6:00 AM on Mondays. Take care. Thank you so much for being part of my world.

Jingle Guy (: 36:05

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this podcast.