Skills
Select one or more knowledge areas or skills to find related occupations.
0 skills selected
Essential knowledge
Essential skills / competences
Optional knowledge
No skills in this section.
Overview
Mental health social workers support people with mental, emotional or substance-use problems. Their work can include counselling, personalised support, crisis intervention, advocacy and recovery follow-up.
In job descriptions, look for clinical social work, diagnosis of mental health issues, social work theory, counselling, crisis intervention and support planning.
Explore this occupation
Open in Job ExplorerWhat the work can involve
A mental health social worker supports people whose everyday life is affected by mental health, emotional or substance-use problems. The work uses clinical social work, diagnosis of mental health issues and social work theory to shape counselling, crisis intervention and recovery support.
Skills and specializations
Useful strengths include clinical social work, diagnosis of mental health issues, social work theory and the ability to build support around an individual case. A strong advert explains whether the role focuses on therapy support, crisis intervention, advocacy, education or monitoring recovery over time.
Salary context
Salary expectations should be compared through case complexity, independence, crisis responsibility and the amount of personalised support the role owns. A mental health social worker coordinating recovery and advocacy has a different scope from a role focused on more limited support tasks.
Career paths
Career development can move toward specialist mental health support, crisis work, case coordination, supervision or programme development. Progress usually depends on careful assessment, reliable documentation, ethical judgement and the ability to keep support practical without reducing the person to a diagnosis.
Good to know
A useful advert should describe the client group, support setting and kind of intervention. Check for clinical social work, diagnosis of mental health issues, crisis intervention, advocacy, recovery monitoring and cooperation with other support services.
Editorial note
This guide is editorial career context. It is not official labour-market statistics or role-specific salary data.
Map overview
Click the map to search for mental health social worker jobs.
— Jobs total — Countries with jobs
O*NET relationships
See occupations connected to this ESCO occupation in the official O*NET–ESCO mapping. The relationship type comes from the source and is not a ranking or recommendation.
O*NET relationships: 4
Psychiatric Technicians
29-2053.00
Close relationship
The occupations are closely related, but the official mapping does not treat them as exact equivalents.
Open in O*NETMental Health Counselors
21-1014.00
Exact relationship
The official mapping treats the O*NET and ESCO occupations as closely equivalent.
Open in O*NETMarriage and Family Therapists
21-1013.00
Close relationship
The occupations are closely related, but the official mapping does not treat them as exact equivalents.
Open in O*NETMental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers
21-1023.00
O*NET occupation is broader
The O*NET occupation covers a broader field of work than this ESCO occupation.
Open in O*NETSource and method
These relationships come from the official European Commission O*NET–ESCO crosswalk.
Relationship direction: O*NET occupation to ESCO occupation.
Several O*NET occupations can point to the same ESCO occupation, and one O*NET occupation can point to several ESCO occupations.
AltoTrail preserves the source relationship type. The order is technical and does not show which occupation is best, most relevant or recommended.
AltoTrail validates and presents the source relationships without adding ranking or recommendation semantics.
Alternative labels
Occupation group
social worker (2635.3)
Source facts
| ESCO URI | http://data.europa.eu/esco/occupation/a76a05bb-e04d-4be8-953e-1ffd691dd58d |
|---|---|
| ESCO code | 2635.3.17 |
| ISCO group | 2635 |
| Concept type | Occupation |