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Mental Health Professional skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
2 min read
Quoted Experts
Kim Jones Ph.D.,
Dr. Benjamin Jeppsen
Mental Health Professional Example Skills
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical mental health professional skills. We ranked the top skills for mental health professionals based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 19.8% of mental health professional resumes contained social work as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a mental health professional needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 mental health professional skills for your resume and career

1. Social Work

Here's how mental health professionals use social work:
  • Collaborate with treatment team with clinical social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and rehabilitation counselors to develop individualized treatment plans.
  • Work collaboratively with other stakeholders such as TDT team members, School Officials, Social Workers, Probation Officers, etc.

2. Patients

Here's how mental health professionals use patients:
  • Established therapy Offered patients instruction in self-care, receptive and expressive language, and self-direction, resulting in improved self-sufficiency.
  • Provided comprehensive, recovery oriented mental health skill building and support to patients with psychiatric disorder, including co-occurring diagnosis

3. CPR

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR is a medical procedure that involves chest compression to help a patient breathe. This artificial ventilation helps in keeping the brain function in place and regulates blood throughout the body. CPR is a lifesaving procedure that is used in emergencies.

Here's how mental health professionals use cpr:
  • Related capabilities: include Crisis Prevention Intervention training and CPR
  • Certified: Crisis Prevention Intervention (CPI), CPR & First aid

4. Excellent Interpersonal

Here's how mental health professionals use excellent interpersonal:
  • Instructed group meetings, applied excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
  • Demonstrated excellent interpersonal skills in relating to residents Work independently to complete daily tasks expected by superiors.

5. Clinical Supervision

Clinical supervision refers to how practicing nurses get professional and moral support from their experienced colleagues. The practice aims to promote their ability to make a concrete decision that values the patient's well-being.

Here's how mental health professionals use clinical supervision:
  • Receive monthly clinical supervision as identified in North Carolina Registered Mental health Intern guidelines.
  • Participated as part of a multidisciplinary treatment team and received informal clinical supervision.

6. Clinical Documentation

Clinical documentation is a record specifying an instance of administered clinical therapy, clinical care, or a clinical test. Clinical reports should be exact, opportune, and reflect all instructions and advisements given to a patient.

Here's how mental health professionals use clinical documentation:
  • Review clinical documentation of Associate and Paraprofessional staff for quality assurance and effective skill building techniques.
  • Provided treatment planning, clinical documentation, interviewing, and case management community outreach referrals.

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7. Mental Health

Mental health is the state of wellbeing in which an individual can cope with the regular stresses and tensions of life, and can work productively without having any emotional or psychological breakdown. Mental health is essential for a person of any age and helps them make the right decisions in their life.

Here's how mental health professionals use mental health:
  • Provide clinical and administrative consultation with mental health professionals and paraprofessionals treating individuals with multifaceted disorders by utilizing necessary community resources.
  • Qualified Mental Health Professional Provided clinical services to adults and children receiving intensive in-home or mental health support services.
Select Skills To Add To Your Resume

8. Mental Health Issues

Here's how mental health professionals use mental health issues:
  • Provided consultation for school staff regarding mental health issues including classroom observation and appropriate service determination.
  • Treated a variety of mental health issues including depression, anxiety disorders, grief and loss issues, post-traumatic stress disorder.

9. Crisis Intervention

Here's how mental health professionals use crisis intervention:
  • Collaborated and provided support to law enforcement agencies in meeting the needs of incarcerated individuals in need of crisis intervention.
  • Provide crisis intervention services to individuals that are diagnosed with a severe and persistent mental illness or serious emotional disturbance.

10. Mental Health Treatment

Here's how mental health professionals use mental health treatment:
  • Provided therapy to individuals, couples and families needing therapeutic/mental health treatment.
  • Planned and facilitated therapeutic group counseling for adolescents who were admitted to the hospital for acute, in-patient mental health treatment.

11. Direct Care

Direct care is the act of identifying people with special needs and offering the necessary care for them.

Here's how mental health professionals use direct care:
  • Delivered direct care services to mentally/physically disabled adults; providing daily instructional activities and tasks based on individual services plans.
  • Provided direct care services to females 12-21 years old in a residential treatment facility for behavioral/mental health/ substance/physical/self abuse/co-dependency/etc.

12. Discharge Planning

Here's how mental health professionals use discharge planning:
  • Allocated and coordinated discharge planning and community re-entry following hospitalizations, out of home placements and other levels of care.
  • Participated in multidisciplinary teams in formulating treatment and discharge planning for in and out patient veterans.

13. Individual Therapy

Here's how mental health professionals use individual therapy:
  • Complete Risk and Therapy Assessment Complete Psychological Evaluations Provide Psycho-education Provide Individual Therapy Develop Behavior Plans Conduct Staff Training
  • Provided Individual Therapy, utilizing Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, Behavior Modification, and Social Skills Training.

14. Substance Abuse

Here's how mental health professionals use substance abuse:
  • Conducted individual/group counseling sessions regarding psychological and emotional issues, such as substance abuse, stress and family situations.
  • Provided community based services to individuals diagnosed with mental health, substance abuse illness, and/or developmental disabilities.

15. Rehabilitation

Here's how mental health professionals use rehabilitation:
  • Developed psycho-social rehabilitation curriculum and provide rehabilitation and counseling, including drug rehabilitation and counseling, to clients.
  • Work with children and families as a psycho-social rehabilitation provider and qualified medical health assistant.
top-skills

What skills help Mental Health Professionals find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on Mental Health Professional resumes?

Kim Jones Ph.D.

Professor, Chair of Clinical Concentration, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

The necessary skills for today's market include the ability to implement evidence-informed mental health approaches, the ability to display empathy, knowledge of crisis intervention models, organizational skills, good work ethic, both verbal and written communication skills, cultural competence, and the ability to adapt to changing technology.

What soft skills should all Mental Health Professionals possess?

Dr. Benjamin Jeppsen

Associate Professor, Augustana University

Cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills are important, including openness to work with people with varying religious views. The ability to easily connect with others and put people at ease in your presence is valuable in working with clients and collaborating with a treatment team. As more and more agencies interact with the medical field, spiritual leaders, and other holistic approaches to health, counselors need to see their role in an interdisciplinary approach to healing and work effectively with other departments. With teletherapy/virtual therapy, just the simple difficulty of creating eye contact when one's camera is not directly aligned with their viewscreen can complicate important connections in the therapeutic relationship. Learning to effectively connect through screens is essential.

What hard/technical skills are most important for Mental Health Professionals?

Dr. Benjamin Jeppsen

Associate Professor, Augustana University

Obviously, mastering the technology used in teletherapy and virtual counseling is essential. Further, the use of computer programs for therapy notes, documentation, and diagnosis is also important. Assessment and psychometric abilities are also important as psychotherapy research has been very clear about the important role of outcome measurement and objective assessment in psychotherapy. When prospective clinicians demonstrate the ability to work with numbers (and the software needed to make them useful), they show an openness to the objective assessment of their work.

What Mental Health Professional skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Sonia Manuel-Dupont Ph.D.Sonia Manuel-Dupont Ph.D. LinkedIn Profile

Associate Professor, Utah State University

If a student takes a gap year, I advise them to look for opportunities to build the skills listed above. Often this comes from community engagement and volunteer work. If the work situation does not align with the intended graduate work, the student should look for volunteer work to practice these skills.

What type of skills will young Mental Health Professionals need?

D

Dr. Eva Moya Ph.D.Dr. Eva Moya Ph.D. LinkedIn Profile

Professor, The University of Texas

Graduates of the social work profession need to be able to work with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and mobilize communities to bring about social, economic, political, or environmental change, in addition to being involved in social policy development.

Skills in research, to study social issues, with the intention of developing social policy or micro-level approaches to practice to improve people's lives, and training in relation to multiculturalism, cultural competence, cultural humility practice is vital.

Key skills include:
-Collaboration
-Critical thinking
-Ethics in evidence based-practice
-Assessment, intervention, and evaluation
-Social work competencies to inform behaviors.
-Administration and management
-Community practice
-Policy practice
Do you want to know more?
Read more about what experts have to say about Mental Health Professional

List of mental health professional skills to add to your resume

Mental Health Professional Skills

The most important skills for a mental health professional resume and required skills for a mental health professional to have include:

  • Social Work
  • Patients
  • CPR
  • Excellent Interpersonal
  • Clinical Supervision
  • Clinical Documentation
  • Mental Health
  • Mental Health Issues
  • Crisis Intervention
  • Mental Health Treatment
  • Direct Care
  • Discharge Planning
  • Individual Therapy
  • Substance Abuse
  • Rehabilitation
  • Correctional Health
  • Therapeutic Services
  • Community Resources
  • Family Therapy
  • Social Services
  • Therapeutic Interventions
  • Therapy Counseling
  • Booking
  • Diagnostic Assessments
  • MHP
  • Community Agencies
  • DBT
  • Autism
  • Psychosocial Assessments
  • Foster Care
  • Team Work
  • Mental Health Assessments
  • Recordkeeping
  • Compassion
  • Group Therapy Sessions
  • Severe Mental Illness
  • Crisis Situations
  • Mental Health Diagnosis
  • Developmental Disabilities
  • Intake Assessments
  • Medication Management
  • Persistent Mental Illness
  • Skill Building
  • Mental Health Disorders
  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
  • Natural Supports
  • Clinical Assessments
  • Behavior Modification

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

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