The School of Psychology welcomes it’s past, present and future stake holders to this website. This site provides information about Psychology as a discipline in Uganda, the student population, courses offered, projects managed, partnerships, and staff capacity. For long, the discipline of Psychology had not been popular in Uganda. Most people did not know what Psychology was all about. The few that had some knowledge about it used to think of Psychologists as people who are only trained to work in mental hospitals. Even at this University, Psychology was taught as a subject in Science, Arts, and Social Sciences in combination with other subjects. There was no fully fledged Psychology degree programme. T
he local and international employment agencies did not also express the need for Psychologists. On a professional level, most psychological problems were handled by the Social Workers. The demand for Psychologists became prominent in the 1990's. This could partly be attributed to the civil war that has raged the country for over 20 years causing trauma to a large section of people in the country. Most of the International NGOs that came in to provide support were incapacitated by the lack of trained professionals who would provide psychological services to the victims of war. This gap propelled the Institute of Psychology to start courses in Community Psychology, Counseling Psychology, and Clinical Psychology. The restructuring processes in the Public Service Sector at the time could also be another factor that facilitated the growth of the Organizational /Industrial Psychology branch. The restructuring process made the civil servants and NGOs realize that there had been overemphasis on Human Resource Management and under emphasis on Human Resource Development. The Institute of Psychology addressed the gap by starting both an undergraduate and a graduate programmes in Organizational Psychology.
The introduction of the Psychology Programmes and the advocacy made has gone a long way to sensitize the population on the relevance of Psychology as a discipline. The Ugandan population has now come to appreciate the need for Psychologists and many other professionals have turned up to the Institute to undertake graduate programmes in Psychology. There is now awareness and the demand for the Psychological services is steadily going up. This site is intended to provide you with information about the activities and developments taking place at the Institute. The launching of this website makes a new development in our determined communication endeavor to serve our clients effectively. In case of further inquiries please contact the office of the Director of the Institute and where specific needs are required to contact the heads of various departments of the Institute.
The website will continue to be updated with new information as and when it comes to our attention. To access information from different departments please contact the following link departments