There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a mental health practitioner. For example, did you know that they make an average of $22.53 an hour? That's $46,858 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 11% and produce 81,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
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.
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the right jobs to get there.
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a mental health practitioner can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as case manager, progress to a title such as senior case manager and then eventually end up with the title senior case manager.
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Use Zippia's Salary Calculator to see how your pay matches up.
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Mental Health Practitioner. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Mental Health Practitioner Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Mental Health Practitioner resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationLong Beach, CA • Public
New York, NY • Public
Philadelphia, PA • Private
Boston, MA • Private
New York, NY • Private
Chapel Hill, NC • Public
Evanston, IL • Private
Albany, NY • Public
San Jose, CA • Public
New York, NY • Private
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 22.5% of mental health practitioners listed mental health on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and emotional skills are important as well.
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a mental health practitioner. The best states for people in this position are New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Mental health practitioners make the most in New Jersey with an average salary of $113,650. Whereas in New York and Connecticut, they would average $110,611 and $91,694, respectively. While mental health practitioners would only make an average of $87,934 in New Hampshire, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Rhode Island
$85,889
Avg. Salary
2. Connecticut
$91,695
Avg. Salary
3. New York
$110,612
Avg. Salary