Healthcare

Psychiatric Aides

Assist mentally impaired or emotionally disturbed patients, working under direction of nursing and medical staff.

Sector: Healthcare
Preparation: Zone 2 — some preparation needed
O*NET code: 31-1133.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Getting Information

central to the job — rated 96/100 for importance.
Assisting and Caring for Others

central to the job — rated 91/100 for importance.
Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates

central to the job — rated 87/100 for importance.
Documenting/Recording Information

central to the job — rated 85/100 for importance.
Training and Teaching Others

a major part of the work — rated 84/100 for importance.
Monitoring Processes, Materials, or Surroundings

a major part of the work — rated 79/100 for importance.

Assist mentally impaired or emotionally disturbed patients, working under direction of nursing and medical staff. May assist with daily living activities, lead patients in educational and recreational activities, or accompany patients to and from examinations and treatments. May restrain violent patients. Includes psychiatric orderlies.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Social Perceptiveness

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Service Orientation

Needed at a solid working level (46/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a basic working level (43/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Monitoring

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Active Listening

Needed at a basic working level (45/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Psychology

Needed at a high level (64/100), and rated 76/100 for importance.
Customer and Personal Service

Needed at a solid working level (58/100), and rated 65/100 for importance.
Therapy and Counseling

Needed at a solid working level (51/100), and rated 53/100 for importance.
English Language

Needed at a basic working level (35/100), and rated 53/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Expression

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Oral Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Problem Sensitivity

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Written Comprehension

Needed at a basic working level (43/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 2 — some preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

A high-school diploma is the usual starting point.

Experience

Some prior work experience helps but is rarely required.

Training

Expect a few months to a year of on-the-job training.

What it pays

These are typical healthcare compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Psychiatric Aides specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Mayo Clinic · Johns Hopkins

$130k – $300k

Regional Health Systems

$100k – $180k

Clinics & Private Practice

$80k – $130k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”
People depend on you directly, and that is the point of the role.From “Assisting and Caring for Others”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Psychiatric Aides. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

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See your fit for Psychiatric Aides

Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Psychiatric Aides and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.