Teaching and community
What does a Mental Health Counsellor do?
Helping people learn, cope and get back on their feet.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- A screen and a keyboard.
- People all day.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $59,350 a year, median
- Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Master's degree
- Several years, and usually a formal qualification.
- Jobs
- +18% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing fast
What is good about it
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
What people find hard about it
- Carrying other people’s distress
- Relapse and setbacks
- Supervision and paperwork
Growing fast, but it needs a master’s degree and supervised hours in most places.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Preparation and marking are automating. Presence, trust and pastoral responsibility are not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Train as a listening volunteer for a few months and see how it sits with you.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.