The first students training for an entirely new mental health job have started classes, the beginning of a workforce experiment that took two rounds of consultation, 441 submissions and a good deal of argument inside the psychology profession to get off the ground. None of them will be working with patients until next year.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey visited the University of Canterbury on Friday to meet the first cohort of students enrolled in the postgraduate diploma that leads to registration as a psychology assistant, announcing the milestone in a statement the same day. Students have also begun the same programme at Auckland University of Technology.
“Today is a landmark moment. These students are the first to train for a brand-new role that will help more New Zealanders get faster access to mental health support, while creating a new career pathway for psychology graduates,” Doocey said.
The job itself is deliberately narrow. Psychology assistants will work under the supervision of registered psychologists, delivering what the Minister described as “low-intensity interventions, supporting assessments, monitoring progress and providing psychoeducation”. The intention is that people with mild or moderate needs get seen sooner, and that registered psychologists are freed up for the most complex cases rather than being the only door into the system.
At least 20 students are training this year, according to Health New Zealand, with the first cohort accepted for study in July. Budget 2026 put $28.45 million into establishing the workforce, covering employment, supervision and training as the role is rolled out across Health NZ and community mental health services. Doocey said that money would support up to 50 new psychology assistants entering the workforce each year.
The problem the role is meant to solve is a familiar one for anyone who has studied psychology in New Zealand. Thousands of students take psychology at undergraduate level, but the number of places on clinical training programmes is tiny by comparison, and missing out has traditionally meant leaving the field altogether.
“We know that every year many psychology graduates miss out on the limited number of postgraduate training places. Without other pathways available, too many of these graduates are lost from the mental health workforce,” Doocey said. “This new role gives them a way to stay in mental health, use their skills, and support more New Zealanders who need help.”
Getting to this point was not straightforward. The New Zealand Psychologists Board approved the role on 13 March this year after an initial survey in late 2024 and a full six-week consultation during 2025. It received 441 submissions from individuals and groups, and convened a consumer focus group with support from the Health Quality and Safety Commission.
The Board was blunt about the objections it heard. Three concerns came up repeatedly. Some services might quietly replace psychologist positions with cheaper, less-trained assistants. Supervision would add load to psychologists who are already stretched. And the role might turn out to be a dead end rather than a step towards becoming a psychologist.
“These are serious concerns, and the Board has weighed them with care,” its decision said, adding that “the concerns expressed by some psychologists reflect the deep commitment of the profession to protecting the public and maintaining high standards of practice”.
The safeguards written into the scope of practice are the answer to those worries. Psychology assistants will not diagnose, will not formulate treatment plans, and will not practise without supervision. The role cannot exist outside a team that includes a registered mental health professional, and the supervising psychologist keeps professional accountability for anything delegated. The title itself was chosen to close off confusion, with the Board stating plainly that psychology assistants are not psychologists.
That naming question was fought over. The New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists argued in its June 2025 submission that the word psychologist must not appear in the title at all, warning that “the public has a great deal of trouble distinguishing between different health disciplines” and that borrowing the term would make it harder for people to know what they were getting. The College also pushed for early-career assistants to work alongside their supervising psychologist rather than under remote oversight, and for supervisors to be given training specific to the role so that scope creep does not set in.
The training is a year of full-time study for a 120-point qualification. At Canterbury, the postgraduate diploma in psychology assistance runs four online courses with weekly interactive sessions and four days on campus in the first semester, followed by a 600-hour supervised placement of roughly four days a week across 18 to 20 weeks. Entry requires a bachelor’s degree in psychology with at least a B average across 300-level papers, including research methods and psychopathology. Graduates can go on to further postgraduate study in clinical, child and family, or organisational psychology.
The new role sits alongside a separate push on clinical psychology training. Doocey said the number of clinical psychology internships is on track to almost double, from 40 in 2023 to 74 this year, and Health NZ has committed to funding salaries for up to 85 clinical psychology interns in publicly funded mental health and addiction services by 2027.
“I’ve been clear that doing nothing is not an option while New Zealanders are waiting too long for support,” Doocey said. “Psychology Assistants are not replacing psychologists, they are working alongside them to help more people access support.”
Whether that holds true will not be clear for some time. The first graduates are due to enter the workforce in 2027, and Health NZ is still developing employment models, supervision guidance and career frameworks through to then. The Board has said it will keep monitoring the role and how much it actually improves access. The test will be simple enough to measure when the time comes, which is whether people waiting for mental health support get seen faster, and whether the number of registered psychologists working in public services keeps going up rather than quietly sliding down.
Have you studied psychology and missed out on a clinical training place, or worked in mental health services under pressure? Tell us what you make of the new role in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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