Originally from Mumbai, India, Dhun Hemal Mehta chose Bath for MSc Health Psychology after completing an undergraduate psychology degree.
After graduating in 2025, she talks about what she feels makes the subject unique, what the placement during her degree taught her, and starting her career with a local youth centre.
What makes health psychology special?
When I was younger, I actually wanted to become an interior designer! But then I completely shifted to psychology once we learnt about it at college. After doing my undergraduate in India, I decided to focus on health psychology.
Health psychology is not that prevalent in India — and mental health is still a taboo — so it was quite a different aspect of the whole field. I covered some clinical and counselling aspects during my bachelor's, and I wanted to explore something new and gain a more global perspective.
In my family, I have people who have had physical illnesses that affected their mental health, so I could see first-hand that the mind and body are connected when it comes to what makes us healthy or ill. We know that when we are stressed, we can have physical symptoms, and vice versa.
Health psychology really captures that dynamic when it comes to studying things like addiction, diabetes, or children with physical illnesses and how that affects their mental health. Even though I plan to go into clinical psychology, it was good to have this holistic understanding of how the mind and body work together.
Studying at Bath
Bath has been a dream come true, to be honest. I’d heard quite a lot about the university from alumni, and as I’m quite active on social media, I networked on LinkedIn and even university groups.
The tag line ‘Belong at Bath’ couldn’t have been more true for me. As soon as you arrive, you feel like you belong — it's a really friendly environment. Bath has a lovely campus, so you don’t really feel like you’re working. Everyone, including the professors, was very helpful and the Student Support team was always available.
I tried to go to as many clubs and events as possible, like the Indian Dance or Hindu Society – even things like stargazing! There's so much to the city that you never get tired of it. The Christmas markets, the Roman Baths, trying out new cafés. It's such a lovely city to live in and I've made some amazing friends within a span of just a year.
Bath is also one of the top-ranked universities globally when it comes to psychology, so it was easy enough to decide that the UK and Bath specifically were the right place for me. Studying abroad and living independently is a great experience, and it helps you become more non-judgmental and open-minded, which is valuable when you’re working in mental health! It's very important that you have access to different cultures and different people so that you can understand how other people think.