Mental Health Practitioner Overview

There are certain skills that many mental health practitioners have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, emotional skills and interpersonal skills.

When it comes to the most important skills required to be a mental health practitioner, we found that a lot of resumes listed 22.5% of mental health practitioners included mental health, while 14.8% of resumes included group therapy, and 8.0% of resumes included treatment plans. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.

When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the mental health practitioner job title. But what industry to start with? Most mental health practitioners actually find jobs in the health care and non profits industries.

If you're interested in becoming a mental health practitioner, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 30.7% of mental health practitioners have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 55.4% of mental health practitioners have master's degrees. Even though most mental health practitioners have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a mental health practitioner. When we researched the most common majors for a mental health practitioner, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on mental health practitioner resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.

You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a mental health practitioner. In fact, many mental health practitioner jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many mental health practitioners also have previous career experience in roles such as case manager or counselor.