A new online survey, which is being conducted as part of Carly Sutherland's PhD work, hopes to help improve psychological health care for people across the country.

Ms Sutherland, who grew up in Birdwoodton, is currently completing her clinical training and a PhD in Psychology at the University of Adelaide.

She says growing up in a regional area influenced her decision to explore the issue.

"We are isolated and we do miss out in a lot of ways with many health services," she says.

"Moving to the city for uni really highlighted that for me."

According to the University of Adelaide, there are 30,000 psychologists in Australia, which makes it the third biggest health profession in Australia. More than 81 per cent work in major cities and the rest in rural and remote areas.

Ms Sutherland is conducting the nation-wide to survey to find out how psychologists can best serve people in regional areas.

She says a need to better understand the attitudes of people in city and country areas, including those who have had experiences with psychological services, and those who haven't.

"At the moment I'm interested about how rural community members think about this," she says.

"It's a really important question, because it might affect how we train psychologists to work in rural areas, or the kind of works that psychologists need to do."

Ms Sutherland, who hopes to work as a rural clinical psychologist when she graduates, says there are challenges, but also advantages, to practicing in regional areas.

"In the city you tend to specialise but in the country you see a bit of everything, and you're really valued for providing a service that might not be there otherwise," she says.

"And of course there's the benefits of the rural lifestyle as well, which is fantastic"

Ms Sutherland is also interviewing psychologists who work with fly-in, fly-out and drive-in, drive-out workers in rural and remote areas.

"FIFO and DIDO work practices have been central to the resource and mining sectors in Australia for many years, but little has been known about the experiences of psychologists who provide these services, and community attitudes towards them," she says.

The survey can be found at http://bit.ly/ozpsychsurvey