A mental health worker provides care for people with mental health concerns or developmental disabilities. You will mostly work under the supervision of a registered nurse in psychiatric hospitals and residential mental health facilities. Some of your core job responsibilities include assessing and interacting with patients to develop treatment plans and strategies, administering therapeutic care, monitoring patients, leading individual, family, or group therapy to foster group support and growth. You will be involved in case management, brokerage services, pharmaceutical assistance, chart documentation, and other insurance concerns.
You are also expected to facilitate communication between care, service, and support providers. Important skills for any mental health worker are crisis intervention, mental health, patient care, CPR, vital signs, and great verbal and non-verbal communication skills. The average mental health worker earns $17.72 per hour or $36,000 annually. Most of them have a bachelor's degree in psychology, social work, criminal justice, or other related fields.
Mental Health Worker Overview
Mental Health Worker Careers
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a mental health worker. For example, did you know that they make an average of $17.72 an hour? That's $36,848 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 11% and produce 81,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Mental Health Worker Do
There are certain skills that many mental health workers 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 organizational skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a mental health worker, we found that a lot of resumes listed 19.4% of mental health workers included crisis intervention, while 10.0% of resumes included mental health, and 10.0% of resumes included patient care. 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 worker job title. But what industry to start with? Most mental health workers actually find jobs in the health care and non profits industries.
How To Become a Mental Health Worker
If you're interested in becoming a mental health worker, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 52.5% of mental health workers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 10.5% of mental health workers have master's degrees. Even though most mental health workers have a college degree, it's possible 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 worker. When we researched the most common majors for a mental health worker, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on mental health worker resumes include master's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a mental health worker. In fact, many mental health worker jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many mental health workers also have previous career experience in roles such as certified nursing assistant or cashier.
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Mental Health Worker Career Paths
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 worker can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as social worker, progress to a title such as therapist and then eventually end up with the title patient care manager.
Mental Health Worker Jobs You Might Like
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Average Salary for a Mental Health Worker
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
Liberty Healthcare Corporation Mental Health Worker Mental Health Worker | Liberty Healthcare Corporation Liberty Healthcare Corporation | 06/30/2021 06/30/2021 | $38,61006/30/2021 $38,610 |
Aspire Health Alliance Mental Health Worker (Respite), Overnight, Sun-Thurs 11P-9A Mental Health Worker (Respite), Overnight, Sun-Thurs 11P-9A | Aspire Health Alliance Aspire Health Alliance | 06/29/2021 06/29/2021 | $31,30506/29/2021 $31,305 |
Shasta County Community Mental Health Worker Community Mental Health Worker | Shasta County Shasta County | 06/26/2021 06/26/2021 | $33,05806/26/2021 $33,058 |
Avera Health Mental Health Rehabilitation Worker Mental Health Rehabilitation Worker | Avera Health Avera Health | 06/26/2021 06/26/2021 | $37,56606/26/2021 $37,566 |
Boulder Community Health Mental Health Worker Mental Health Worker | Boulder Community Health Boulder Community Health | 06/25/2021 06/25/2021 | $44,64106/25/2021 $44,641 |
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Mental Health Worker Resumes
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 Worker. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
10 Best Resume Templates In 2021
Learn How To Write a Mental Health Worker Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Mental Health Worker 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 InformationTop Colleges for Mental Health Workers
1. California State University - Long Beach
Long Beach, CA • Private
2. Hunter College of the City University of New York
New York, NY • Private
3. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
4. New York University
New York, NY • Private
5. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI • Private
6. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Private
7. San Jose State University
San Jose, CA • Private
8. Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY • Private
9. Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD • Private
10. Coppin State University
Baltimore, MD • Private
Online Courses For Mental Health Worker That You May Like
Substance Abuse & Mental Health Interventions: Drug & Alcohol Addiction & Mental Health - Integrative Holistic Approach...
Despite medical and technological advances, half of the world’s population lacks access to essential health services, and over 8.9 million preventable deaths occur every year. There is an acute global shortage of health workers, a gap that will grow to 18 million by 2030. Studies show that training high-performing community health workers can help close these gaps and save more than 3 million lives annually. In the past few decades, many community health worker programs across the world have...
(20 contact hours) Learn a groundbreaking, holistic and integrative approach to treating mental health problems. This course will provide complementary methods of care which are combined with medications and psychotherapy to effectively address the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of individuals with a variety of mental health conditions...
Top Skills For a Mental Health Worker
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, 19.4% of mental health workers listed crisis intervention on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and emotional skills are important as well.
- Crisis Intervention, 19.4%
- Mental Health, 10.0%
- Patient Care, 10.0%
- CPR, 5.4%
- Vital Signs, 5.0%
- Other Skills, 50.2% See All Mental Health Worker Skills
Best States For a Mental Health Worker
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a mental health worker. The best states for people in this position are New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Nevada. Mental health workers make the most in New Jersey with an average salary of $49,965. Whereas in New York and Connecticut, they would average $49,482 and $46,755, respectively. While mental health workers would only make an average of $46,681 in Nevada, 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. New Hampshire
$44,901
Avg. Salary
2. North Carolina
$39,964
Avg. Salary
3. California
$45,347
Avg. Salary
How Do Mental Health Worker Rate Their Jobs?
Top Mental Health Worker Employers
Mental Health Worker Videos
