Is the psychology profession in crisis after NEP 2020? Experts weigh in Premium

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has set in motion several reforms in psychology education and training that have led to much confusion in the fraternity. Starting with the abolition of the M.Phil degree through attempts to standardize and license the entire profession to derecognizing distance learning modes, the changes have made many asking for clarity. They add that these reforms may only worsen the current situation of scarcity of mental health professionals.

For instance, the NEP’s overhaul of postgraduate pathways, especially the abolition of the M.Phil degree, has thrown clinical psychology into a period of uncertainty, even as new Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) regulations attempt to redefine the route to professional practice. Earlier, in the practice of Clinical Psychology in India, completing one’s M.Phil in Clinical Psychology from an RCI-recognised institute or alternatively a PsyD (Doctorate in Psychology) meant the ability to register with the RCI and legally practise as a Clinical Psychologist. More than 70 institutions across the country offer this intensive, hospital-embedded programme, and, for decades, it functioned as the profession’s gold-standard qualification.

In response, the RCI has introduced a new two-year M.A. Clinical Psychology programme (from 2025–26) to replace the M.Phil and preserve a clearly regulated clinical pathway. The new guidelines require students to enter with a four-year B.A./B.Sc. Psychology degree or an additional bridge year, ensure extensive hands-on training across psychiatric, medical, and rehabilitation settings, and mandate strict faculty-to-student ratios and institutional infrastructure standards.

Across multiple decades, RCI-licensed clinical psychologists have been distinguished as the only category authorised to “treat” mental health disorders, conduct diagnostic assessments, and engage in higher-order clinical interventions. Their separate licensure has sustained a professional hierarchy that continues to hold today. The NEP’s structural changes, combined with the RCI’s new guidelines, are reshaping how this hierarchy will function but in doing so, they have also created new questions about equivalence, recognition, and how the clinical track will intersect with the emerging degrees regulated by the National Council for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP).

Debated route to psychology practice

Many professional psychologists see the Ph.D degree as an exercise in research and academia and extends the duration of study for a profession that requires many hours of practice and hands-on training. Dr. Jamuna Rajeshwaran, Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology, NIMHANS, says the schedule now stipulates four years for a Bachelor’s Degree, two for the Master’s, and 3-5 years for a Ph.D or a Psy D. “The result is an extended duration of study that delays the supply of adequately trained and licensed practitioners, which is an urgent need in India today,” she adds.

Sana Joseph, a practicing counselling psychologist, says the Ph.D is a research qualification and does not create a market for competence in practicing, she says. “The Ph.D requirement to practice also becomes a burden and hinderance.”

NCAHP framework

The second shift is the NCAHP framework that seeks to transform the world of previously unregulated psychology programmes into competency-based, professionally licensable qualifications with a standardised national curriculum and clearly defined scopes of practice. Counselling, behavioural health, and preventive mental-health professions fields that have operated for decades outside the RCI’s iron-clad licensure will now come under the NCAHP. Until now, psychology degrees such as the BA/BSc, MA/MSc, MPhil, and PhD were governed solely by the UGC’s academic frameworks, without any mechanism to certify practical competence or authorise professional practice.

The NCAHP seeks to change this by absorbing counselling and behavioural-health roles into a unified regulatory system, prescribing what psychologists can practise and how they must be trained. Its new curriculum outlines a national standard for Bachelor’s and Master’s level psychology qualifications, structured around competency domains including assessment skills, counselling and behavioural interventions, health promotion, case documentation, crisis management, and adherence to ethical guidelines. Students must complete supervised practicum hours, field exposure in community and healthcare settings, and structured training in behavioural-health interventions aligned with global allied-health standards.

For institutions, the framework introduces stringent requirements: minimum faculty qualifications, mandatory laboratory facilities, supervised internship sites, and detailed evaluation criteria. This marks the first time that counselling and behavioural-health training will follow an accredited, professionally oriented curriculum, rather than the disparate syllabi offered across universities. By defining scopes of practice, regulating syllabi, and prescribing licensure pathways, the NCAHP positions itself to professionalise a large segment of the mental-health workforce that has long lacked recognition, structure, and accountability.

“For decades”, says Dr Damodaran, Associate Professor of Psychology, Meenakshi Academy, “India’s regulation of psychology and who could assess mental health conditions was tightly controlled by the RCI, which recognised only clinical psychology as a legitimate practice area.”

Currently, in the Counselling Psychology discipline, those without Ph.Ds who have completed their Masters can still practice, says counselling psychologist, Ms. Sana Joseph, who practices at The Sounding Board, Bengaluru. “In some ways psychologists are able to appreciate the rigour being brought by the new regulations.” But she adds that there is a lack of clarity for those already practicing. “It causes a lot of confusion for those who want to pursue psychology as a profession as well.”

Dr. Ashlesha Bagadia, perinatal psychiatrist and psychologist, Bengaluru who runs a training organisation at The Parc Academy comments on the lack of exposure that B.Sc/M.Sc psychologists have with the lack of clinical practice that the NCAHP seeks to address. “Their skills develop only after they graduate. These changes are being proposed so that more psychologists start working within an ethical framework and are held accountable for their professional practice.”

Supporters of the NCAHP say this will give credibility and a regulatory framework to mental-health professionals who currently fall outside the RCI’s purview. It will also ensure that counselling psychologists meet basic criteria of supervised training before starting practice, that training institutions follow accredited frameworks, and that there is clarity on who can call themselves a psychologist.

It’s the same rigour that’s been lacking for a while, which is why psychiatrists like Dr. Abhijit Nadkarni, Goa-based psychologist, is sceptical about the changes. His concern is not with the idea of raising standards, but with the order in which reforms are being introduced. “While the NEP is trying to globalise a standard of education in psychology, it feels like there hasn’t been a strong regulatory foundation laid. So much of practice already goes on with training but without a license”, he says.

As a result, he argues, the country risks building an elaborate training pipeline on top of a weak regulatory base. Without a credible, functioning licensing authority already in place, new degrees may not translate into safer or more accountable practice.

Shilpa Waghmare, a trauma-focused therapist in Bengaluru, says that the distinction between different kinds of mental-health professionals remains blurry even in India’s most developed cities. “Bengaluru and Mumbai, which are relatively more mental-health savvy, have some levels of distinction,” she explains. “But beyond these, there is virtually no differentiation across fields.”

She notes that while clinical psychologists are formally registered under the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), counselling psychologists, trauma therapists, and other non-clinical practitioners have historically fallen outside any structured licensing framework. This lack of formal recognition, she argues, has contributed to public confusion about who is qualified to provide which services — a gap that the NCAHP now claims it will address. “Counselling Psychology has historically always fallen through the cracks, between health and social science, with no central registration system. Earlier, we had no licensing body. Each state had its own setup. The NCAHP could change that, but it also means merging us into a sea of other allied-health professions,” Ms. Waghmare explains. “Clinical psychology will still sit at the top of the hierarchy.”

B. Psych and M. Psych, competency based courses

The NEP-era B.Psych and M.Psych degrees represent an attempt to make psychology education explicitly competency-based, aligning undergraduate and postgraduate training with the structured, supervised model long used in RCI-regulated clinical programmes. Under the proposed framework, the B.Psych aims to mirror elements seen in the RCI’s new B.Sc. Clinical Psychology (2024) programme that emphasises hands-on training, supervised practicum, behavioural health competencies, and structured exposure to assessments and counselling. Similarly, the new M.Psych is meant to function as a practice-oriented postgraduate pathway, paralleling the rigour seen in the revised RCI M.A. Clinical Psychology guidelines, which require extensive clinical placements, psychodiagnostic training, supervised psychotherapy, and competency certification before graduation.

With this introduction of these new degrees comes a level of ambiguity in nomenclature and differentiation of the B. Psych/MPsych in reference to the already existing bachelor’s/master’s degrees. Dr. Jamuna says that terminologies used in the draft schedule requires a clarification. “The proposed framework refers to courses as B.Psych. (Bachelor of Psychology) and M.Psych. (Master of Psychology), but elsewhere the document mentions existing degrees such as B.A./B.Sc. Psychology and M.A. Psychology”, she says. This inconsistency in nomenclature, she argues, could lead to significant confusion about course equivalence and eligibility particularly for students who have already completed or are pursuing B.A./B.Sc. programmes in Psychology. “There should be an equivalency (e.g., BA Psychology, BSc Psychology, BPsych) and allowing institutions that provide those degrees (subject to accreditation) to qualify”, she suggests.

For universities and colleges currently offering B.Sc. and M.Sc. Psychology, the question is now existential. Should they begin transitioning to the B.Psy/M.Psy format that falls under NCAHP recognition? This is the question Dr. Damodaran also asks when it comes to his own students. Institutes that continue with older structures risk being seen as outdated, while those that adapt too early face uncertainty about final approval. For students, employability and registration will soon hinge on whether their course is NCAHP-approved, not just UGC-recognised.

Discrediting distance learning and other learning modules

One of the most contentious consequences of the NEP and NCAHP reforms is the effective discrediting of distance learning and flexible pathways, a route that thousands of mid-career psychologists depended on to enter or remain in the mental-health workforce. The new policy positions psychology almost entirely as a clinical, treatment-driven profession, sidelining those who work in preventive, community, or counselling roles.

This worries practitioners like Azeem Dana, a PhD scholar who completed his earlier training through distance education. “Clients are often looking for an immediate solution. There is so much ambiguity among Indians about who does what, and no distinction between prevention and cure,” he says.

For him, the distinction is clear: clinical psychologists diagnose and treat severe disorders, while counselling and preventive work in psychoeducation, early intervention and stress support are what most people actually need. The RCI’s latest B.Sc Psych (Hons) curriculum under NEP guidelines (effective from 2024-25) highlights this fact as well. The preamble states, “To a large extent, mental illnesses are preventable. This is possible, if there is adequate sensitization in the community. Lack of promotive as well as preventive measures have significant impact on the burden of mental illness on the society.”

For many second-career professionals, people who came into psychology after years in other fields, the NEP reform feels like the door has been abruptly shut. “I wanted to do EMDR trauma training,” Ms. Shilpa Waghmare adds. “But they didn’t take me because my master’s was a distance programme. I don’t see why the mode of study, by itself, should disqualify anyone.”

Ms. Waghmare also warns that excluding distance learning will shrink entry pathways into a field that desperately needs more workers, not fewer. “We are already at an abysmal ratio- one psychologist for so many thousands of people,” she says. “If access to training becomes more rigid, the numbers will get worse. In the West, you can’t do medicine long-distance, so maybe this is India pulling its socks up. But in a country with so few training institutions, this will limit access massively.”

The latest set of changes “treats anything done through distance learning as null and void,” adds Mr. Dana, despite the fact that many who trained this way have been practising competently for years. He points out that community health workers like ASHA workers receive only two weeks of training, while mid-career psychologists with full postgraduate degrees are now being deemed ineligible simply because of the mode of education. “Those of us practising have some knowledge. Instead of acknowledging our work, it is being dismissed,” he says. “There is total confusion. People just want solutions. All departments need counselling schools, hospitals, workplaces but those doing the work are not recognised.”

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