Overview

Therapies

If you want to help other people, there are also various career goals in non-medical therapy. These include, for example, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech therapy and music or art therapy.

The study field at a glance

A hallmark of this area of study is that all degree programs are dedicated to helping people maintain or restore their health. In addition to the specific therapeutic and medical knowledge, students are often given an understanding of psychology, legal and social fundamentals.

Offered courses

The interdisciplinary therapy science deals with prevention, curation and rehabilitation. In addition, students learn basic knowledge in management as well as subject-specific business administration and IT.

  • Logopedics (speech / speech therapy), clinical linguistics and patholinguistics are all concerned with the treatment of hearing, voice, speech and swallowing disorders, e.g. in language acquisition in childhood or after strokes.
  • Occupational therapy uses a wide range of occupational and occupational therapy methods to help ill or disabled people to activate their (remaining) workforce or to help them integrate into everyday life and work.
  • Physiotherapy deals mainly with prevention, counseling and therapy regarding functional and developmental disorders of the musculoskeletal system.
  • Music therapy deals with listening to music selected for diagnosis (passive music therapy) and with the active use of musical expressive means (active music therapy), e.g. Using Percussion or Orff Instruments, the ill and disabled poeple. For people with autistic disorders those are their first communication channels.
  • Note: This work area partially overlaps with Rhythm and General Music Education (AME).
  • Similar tasks are taken up by art therapy, which helps its patients with various articulation possibilities of the visual arts, e.g. to elaborate problems and processes visually and to make "pictorial" and thus to create a "visible" basis in order to really deal with it.

There are dual study options for the therapy professions. In addition, the federal states have the option of setting up primary qualifying university degree programs in physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy on a trial basis. Graduates of one of these programs can then use the professional title - e.g. physiotherapist or occupational therapist - lead and have at the same time acquired the Bachelor's degree. These programs complement the diverse range of vocational training courses in some therapeutic subjects).

Contents of the course

Within the scope of the study, up to three internships are obligatory. They last between six weeks and three months (practical semester) and are usually connected to a therapeutic practice.

In all undergraduate courses of study, basic biomedical, diagnostic and therapeutic training takes place in the Bachelor's degree program.

  • This includes module offers in various psychological and medical disciplines as well as in musical and pictorial basic subjects and their therapeutic application in music and art therapy courses.
  • Psychological, neurological, linguistic and audiological-phoniatric studies make up the first semesters in the language therapy programs.
  • In music therapy, e.g. self-experience for music therapists as well as supervision, in art therapy art theory.

The master's program usually continues topics, deepens and expands them and teaches practical knowledge at an advanced level. There are also modules for quality assurance and for the social and health system.

Admission criteria & study application

In speech therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy there areamong other things the concept of a dual study program, in which vocational education and training in a corresponding occupation and a basic Fachhochschule study are parallel and interrelated; However, at the beginning of studies, a completed initial training in a corresponding occupation is required.

For the artistic therapy courses one needs, in addition to the diploma, appropriate aptitude certificates, e.g. a passed entrance exam.

Possible careers after graduation

Non-physician therapists usually treat sick and disabled patients independently using the methods of their respective field. They work in clinics, rehabilitation facilities, health education institutions and freelance / self-employed or in private practice.