The Mental Health Professional, also known as a Mental Health Therapist, diagnoses and treats patients with mental health illnesses and disorders. The Therapist, amongst other things, is tasked with doing comprehensive patient assessments, diagnosing mental health disorders, providing crisis support, organizing and fulfilling sessions with the patients, their families, groups of people with similar or same mental health issues, and others.
They also might redirect patients to other, more specialized therapists, as needed, and monitor the progress of patients during treatment. Due to the nature of their job, the Therapist also has to keep up to date with the latest research and studies of the mental health industry and their specific fields.
A person hoping to begin work as a Mental Health Professional must generally have a Master's Degree in Psychology, Social Work, or a related subject. They will most likely have to have previous experience in a similar position and some form of certification or licensing, varying from state to state.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Mental Health Professional. For example, did you know that they make an average of $23.13 an hour? That's $48,109 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 Professionals 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.
If you're interested in becoming a Mental Health Professional, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 57.8% of Mental Health Professionals have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 33.5% of Mental Health Professionals have master's degrees. Even though most Mental Health Professionals 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 Professional. When we researched the most common majors for a Mental Health Professional, we found that they most commonly earn Bachelor's Degree degrees or Master's Degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on Mental Health Professional resumes include Associate Degree degrees or Doctoral Degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a Mental Health Professional. In fact, many Mental Health Professional jobs require experience in a role such as Internship. Meanwhile, many Mental Health Professionals also have previous career experience in roles such as Case Manager or Social Work Internship.