Psychiatric social worker's responsibilities and client populations will vary significantly depending on their work setting and the teams to which they are assigned at their place of employment. They sometimes work in inpatient hospital settings and complete many tasks to support patients suffering through mental health issues. This is a highly rewarding profession that also offers a range of employment opportunities.
The tasks and responsibilities that they fulfill in this capacity include, but are not limited to, attending to patients suffering complex and hard-to-manage conditions who are in deep emotional stress and/or could be a danger to themselves or others. Others include psychosocial and risk assessments, individualized and group psychotherapy, crisis intervention and support, care coordination, and discharge planning services. Psychiatric social workers are employed in a variety of settings, ranging from intensive inpatient wards to outpatient psychiatric clinics. Qualifications include graduate-level training in clinical social work methods. A master's degree in social work would be advantageous.
The average hourly salary for the position is $30.22, which amounts to $62,853 annually. The career is projected to grow substantially and create new opportunities all across the United States.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a psychiatric social worker. For example, did you know that they make an average of $30.22 an hour? That's $62,853 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 psychiatric social 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 interpersonal skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a psychiatric social worker, we found that a lot of resumes listed 13.6% of psychiatric social workers included treatment plans, while 10.6% of resumes included crisis intervention, and 10.1% of resumes included mental health. 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 psychiatric social worker job title. But what industry to start with? Most psychiatric social workers actually find jobs in the health care and non profits industries.
If you're interested in becoming a psychiatric social worker, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 8.6% of psychiatric social workers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 82.2% of psychiatric social workers have master's degrees. Even though most psychiatric social workers 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 psychiatric social worker. When we researched the most common majors for a psychiatric social worker, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on psychiatric social worker resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a psychiatric social worker. In fact, many psychiatric social worker jobs require experience in a role such as social worker. Meanwhile, many psychiatric social workers also have previous career experience in roles such as social work internship or internship.