FlightWay / Careers / Mental Health Counselors

Healthcare

Mental Health Counselors

Counsel and advise individuals and groups to promote optimum mental and emotional health, with an emphasis on prevention.

Sector: Healthcare
Preparation: Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed
O*NET code: 21-1014.00

What you'll actually do

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

Assisting and Caring for Others

central to the job — rated 97/100 for importance.
Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

central to the job — rated 91/100 for importance.
Getting Information

central to the job — rated 91/100 for importance.
Making Decisions and Solving Problems

central to the job — rated 89/100 for importance.
Documenting/Recording Information

central to the job — rated 88/100 for importance.
Thinking Creatively

a major part of the work — rated 83/100 for importance.

Counsel and advise individuals and groups to promote optimum mental and emotional health, with an emphasis on prevention. May help individuals deal with a broad range of mental health issues, such as those associated with addictions and substance abuse; family, parenting, and marital problems; stress management; self-esteem; or aging.

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 expert level (82/100), and rated 100/100 for importance.
Active Listening

Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 100/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Reading Comprehension

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Writing

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Therapy and Counseling

Needed at expert level (99/100), and rated 100/100 for importance.
Psychology

Needed at expert level (96/100), and rated 99/100 for importance.
Customer and Personal Service

Needed at expert level (85/100), and rated 88/100 for importance.
English Language

Needed at a high level (62/100), and rated 83/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Comprehension

Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 97/100 for importance.
Oral Expression

Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 91/100 for importance.
Problem Sensitivity

Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Inductive Reasoning

Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

Graduate school — a master's, a PhD, an MD or a JD, depending on the field.

Experience

More than five years of related experience is common before the title is yours.

Training

This is a long runway. Start the prerequisites early or the timeline slips a year at a time.

What it pays

These are typical healthcare compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Mental Health Counselors 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.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
You are in front of the public, so the job is partly performance.From “Performing for or Working Directly with the Public”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
You own decisions rather than execute someone else’s.From “Making Decisions and Solving Problems”
Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”

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 Mental Health Counselors. 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.

More in Healthcare

See every Healthcare career →

See your fit for Mental Health Counselors

Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Mental Health Counselors 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.