Automatically apply for jobs with Zippia

Upload your resume to get started.

Mental health counselor skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted experts

Kim Jones Ph.D.,

Dr. Benjamin Jeppsen

Below we've compiled a list of the most critical mental health counselor skills. We ranked the top skills for mental health counselors based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 16.6% of mental health counselor resumes contained social work as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a mental health counselor needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 mental health counselor skills for your resume and career

2. Patients

Here's how mental health counselors use patients:

Provided individual counseling of adult, adolescent and child patients and facilitated group discussions related to cognitive and life-coping skills topics.
Documented interdisciplinary progress notes on patients affect, safety and/or other concerns to communicate among patients' treatment team.

3. Crisis Intervention

Here's how mental health counselors use crisis intervention:

Develop bio/psycho/social assessments, provide diagnostic evaluation and triage services, render crisis intervention and stabilization services and advocate for clients.
Provided behavior modification, counseling and crisis intervention services to adults with various types of mental illness in an inpatient facility.

4. Patient Care

Patient care entails the diagnosis, recovery, and control of sickness as well as the maintenance of physical and emotional well-being through the use of healthcare providers' services. Patient care is described as services provided to patients by health practitioners or non-professionals under guidance.

Here's how mental health counselors use patient care:

Suggested solutions for positive change including assisting Veterans with scheduling and coordinating outpatient care prior to discharge.
Performed patient care planning through use of interdisciplinary team meetings and communication with multiple levels of management.

5. Mental Health Issues

Here's how mental health counselors use mental health issues:

Administered psycho-social Assessments, motivational interviews and consultation to clients with mental health issues, developmental and psychological issues.
Provided case management, comprehensive assessment and psychiatric rehabilitation to CalWorks adults with severe and persistent mental health issues.

6. Rehabilitation

Here's how mental health counselors use rehabilitation:

Counseled adolescents at Residential Drug/Alcohol Rehabilitation and long-term Psychiatric Facility
Provided resources and referrals within and outside the agency for therapy, vocational rehabilitation, education services, social service benefits.

Choose from 10+ customizable mental health counselor resume templates

Build a professional mental health counselor resume in minutes. Our AI resume writing assistant will guide you through every step of the process, and you can choose from 10+ resume templates to create your mental health counselor resume.

7. CPR

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR is a medical procedure that involves chest compression to help a patient breathe. This artificial ventilation helps in keeping the brain function in place and regulates blood throughout the body. CPR is a lifesaving procedure that is used in emergencies.

Here's how mental health counselors use cpr:

Certified in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), First aid, Seizure, Med, HIPPA, and Blood Borne pathogens.
Served as the Human Rights Officer for the program and was trained in CPR, First Aid, and MAP certified.

8. Family Therapy

Here's how mental health counselors use family therapy:

Utilized an eclectic counseling approach embracing theories from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Structural Family Therapy and Family SystemsTheory.
Conduct therapeutic individual and family therapy sessions utilizing Cognitive Behavioral, Solution Focused, and Strengths Based approaches.

9. Community Resources

Community resources are a set of resources that are used in the day to day life of people which improves their lifestyle in some way. People, sites or houses, and population assistance can come under the services offered by community resources.

Here's how mental health counselors use community resources:

Maintain a productive and positive relationship with community resources and completing accurate and timely quarterly reports and needs assessments.
Work with family stabilization team to identify community resources in order for consumers to live independently in the community.

10. Mental Health

Mental health is the state of wellbeing in which an individual can cope with the regular stresses and tensions of life, and can work productively without having any emotional or psychological breakdown. Mental health is essential for a person of any age and helps them make the right decisions in their life.

Here's how mental health counselors use mental health:

Provided mental health counseling services to severely psychological disabled individuals with diagnoses of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia depression and borderline disorders.
Provided mental health support services in a community-based setting for adults with serious and persistent mental illness and/or co-occurring disabilities.

11. Discharge Planning

Here's how mental health counselors use discharge planning:

Maintained daily documentation through progress notes plan and implement specific individualized treatment plans, discharge planning and daily attendance.
Discharge planning as part of in-patient consultation on medical & psychiatric/detoxification units as well on an outpatient basis.

12. Substance Abuse Issues

Here's how mental health counselors use substance abuse issues:

Provide clinical and therapeutic counseling services for diverse adult patient population, including veterans with mental/behavioral illness and substance abuse issues.
Provided individual therapy utilizing motivational interviewing techniques for clients with substance abuse issues and other co-occurring psychiatric disorders.

13. Therapeutic Environment

Here's how mental health counselors use therapeutic environment:

Create and maintain a therapeutic environment to provide individual and academic success as well as encourage children to express emotions and experiences
Provide a therapeutic environment per program standards and resident treatment plan, including skills-development and transportation of residents as required.

14. Intake Assessments

Here's how mental health counselors use intake assessments:

Completed intake assessments, formulated treatment plans, and collaborated with community providers.
Facilitated daily educational groups, and provided intake assessments in the emergency room.

15. Vital Signs

Vital signs are a set of values indicating different body systems' performance. They are measurements of the body's most basic functions. The four major vital signs used in medicine to assess a patient are body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure.

Here's how mental health counselors use vital signs:

Monitored patient vital signs, administered medication and supported patients as needed according to their individualized treatment plans.
Present vital signs information and detailed documentation to nurses/physicians for overall assessments and decision making.

5 Mental Health Counselor resume examples

Build a professional mental health counselor resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 5+ resume templates to create your mental health counselor resume.

Create my resume

Build a professional resume in minutes using this template.

What skills help Mental Health Counselors find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on mental health counselor resumes?

Kim Jones Ph.D.

Professor, Chair of Clinical Concentration, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

The necessary skills for today's market include the ability to implement evidence-informed mental health approaches, the ability to display empathy, knowledge of crisis intervention models, organizational skills, good work ethic, both verbal and written communication skills, cultural competence, and the ability to adapt to changing technology.

What soft skills should all mental health counselors possess?

Dr. Benjamin Jeppsen

Associate Professor, Augustana University

Cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills are important, including openness to work with people with varying religious views. The ability to easily connect with others and put people at ease in your presence is valuable in working with clients and collaborating with a treatment team. As more and more agencies interact with the medical field, spiritual leaders, and other holistic approaches to health, counselors need to see their role in an interdisciplinary approach to healing and work effectively with other departments. With teletherapy/virtual therapy, just the simple difficulty of creating eye contact when one's camera is not directly aligned with their viewscreen can complicate important connections in the therapeutic relationship. Learning to effectively connect through screens is essential.

What hard/technical skills are most important for mental health counselors?

Dr. Benjamin Jeppsen

Associate Professor, Augustana University

Obviously, mastering the technology used in teletherapy and virtual counseling is essential. Further, the use of computer programs for therapy notes, documentation, and diagnosis is also important. Assessment and psychometric abilities are also important as psychotherapy research has been very clear about the important role of outcome measurement and objective assessment in psychotherapy. When prospective clinicians demonstrate the ability to work with numbers (and the software needed to make them useful), they show an openness to the objective assessment of their work.

What mental health counselor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Lillian Wichinsky Ph.D.

Associate Dean, University of Nevada - Reno

The need for social workers with expertise in mental health care, school-based social work, health and substance misuse are particularly important. Sixty percent of mental health care in the US is provided by social workers and the need is growing.

What type of skills will young mental health counselors need?

Dr. Eva Moya Ph.D.

Professor, The University of Texas

Graduates of the social work profession need to be able to work with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and mobilize communities to bring about social, economic, political, or environmental change, in addition to being involved in social policy development.

Skills in research, to study social issues, with the intention of developing social policy or micro-level approaches to practice to improve people's lives, and training in relation to multiculturalism, cultural competence, cultural humility practice is vital.

Key skills include:
-Collaboration
-Critical thinking
-Ethics in evidence based-practice
-Assessment, intervention, and evaluation
-Social work competencies to inform behaviors.
-Administration and management
-Community practice
-Policy practice

What technical skills for a mental health counselor stand out to employers?

Madeline Lee Ph.D.

Associate Professor, California State University San Marcos

There are technical skills that may stand out to employers, but as social workers, I think those technical skills together with "soft skills," can make an applicant really stand out to employers; social workers can combine their research skills with evidence-informed care and organizational quality improvement efforts, while being able to lead, build relationships, and think critically. In the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, our graduates will need to be able to fluidly navigate between employing telehealth methods to performing their work safely in-person when engaging and helping clients. To be effective, social workers will also need to understand the reverberating effects of the deep-seated roots of racism in our country and be willing to honestly confront and address those issues in whatever role they assume. Social workers are needed now more than ever.

Do you want to know more?

List of mental health counselor skills to add to your resume

The most important skills for a mental health counselor resume and required skills for a mental health counselor to have include:

Social Work
Patients
Crisis Intervention
Patient Care
Mental Health Issues
Rehabilitation
CPR
Family Therapy
Community Resources
Mental Health
Discharge Planning
Substance Abuse Issues
Therapeutic Environment
Intake Assessments
Vital Signs
Compassion

Eating Disorders
Persistent Mental Illness
Crisis Management
Individual Therapy
Therapeutic Interventions
Community Agencies
Psychosocial Assessments
Direct Care
Dual Diagnosis
Emotional Health
Support Services
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Therapeutic Milieu
Group Therapy Sessions
Clinical Assessments
Independent Living

Mental Health Disorders
Anger Management
IEP
Crisis Situations
Developmental Disabilities
Medication Management
DBT
Mental Health Assessments
Conflict Resolution
Sexual Abuse
Domestic Violence
PTSD
Relapse Prevention
Behavioral Issues
Behavioral Problems
Individual Sessions

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

Browse community and social services jobs