Top 12 Mental Health Professional Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the dynamic field of mental health, showcasing a robust set of professional skills on your resume can significantly enhance your marketability and potential for career advancement. A well-curated list of competencies not only reflects your expertise and dedication to the profession but also positions you as a compelling candidate in a competitive job landscape.

Mental Health Professional Skills

1. Empathy
2. Active Listening
3. Crisis Intervention
4. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
5. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
6. Motivational Interviewing
7. Psychoanalysis
8. Group Facilitation
9. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
10. Trauma-Informed Care
11. Psychological Assessment
12. Electronic Health Records (EHR)

1. Empathy

Empathy in the context of a mental health professional is the capacity to understand and share another person’s emotional experience, forming a genuine connection that supports healing and growth.

Why It's Important

Empathy builds trust, deepens insight, and strengthens the therapeutic alliance. With it, clients feel seen and safe, which opens doors to meaningful change.

How to Improve Empathy Skills

Empathy sharpens with deliberate practice and reflection.

1. Active listening: Listen to understand, not to reply. Reflect feelings. Suspend judgment.
2. Self-reflection: Examine your biases, triggers, and assumptions. Know your lens so you can set it aside.
3. Targeted training: Workshops, role-plays, and supervision focused on empathic responding.
4. Read widely: Fiction, memoir, and ethnography stretch perspective and nuance.
5. Seek feedback: Ask colleagues and supervisors how your empathy lands in session. Adjust.
6. Mindfulness: Presence begets attunement. Practice noticing, gently, without rushing to fix.

Fold these habits into daily work and empathy becomes steadier, more precise, more helpful.

How to Display Empathy Skills on Your Resume

2. Active Listening

Active listening means concentrating fully on what clients say and mean, reflecting content and emotion, and remembering key details. It signals respect and validation throughout therapy.

Why It's Important

It fosters trust, clarifies the client’s experience, and guides tailored interventions that actually fit the person in front of you.

How to Improve Active Listening Skills

1. Maintain eye contact: Convey steadiness and care.
2. Reduce distractions: Quiet room, clear desk, silenced devices.
3. Reflect and clarify: Paraphrase and summarize to check understanding.
4. Use nonverbal cues: Nod, lean in, soften your tone.
5. Don’t interrupt: Let the story breathe. Wait, then respond.
6. Ask open questions: Invite nuance and elaboration.
7. Show empathy: Name feelings. Normalize where appropriate.

How to Display Active Listening Skills on Your Resume

3. Crisis Intervention

Crisis intervention is short-term, immediate support aimed at stabilizing acute distress, reducing risk, and restoring basic functioning with concrete steps and resources.

Why It's Important

Timely, skillful response prevents harm, prioritizes safety, and clears a path toward ongoing care. Seconds matter; clarity matters more.

How to Improve Crisis Intervention Skills

1. Refine communication: Grounding tone, plain language, structured choices.
2. Pursue specialized training: Psychological First Aid, Critical Incident Stress Management, suicide risk assessment.
3. Stay current: Follow evidence-based guidance and update protocols regularly.
4. Build safety plans: Triggers, coping strategies, supports, emergency steps, means safety.
5. Prioritize self-care: Debrief, set limits, protect your stamina.
6. Use networks: Warm handoffs, multidisciplinary coordination, community resources.
7. Leverage technology: Telehealth, secure messaging, crisis lines (e.g., 988 in the U.S.).

How to Display Crisis Intervention Skills on Your Resume

4. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a structured, goal-focused therapy that targets unhelpful thoughts and behaviors to influence emotions and outcomes. It spans insomnia to anxiety to depression and beyond, with clear skills practice and measurable change.

Why It's Important

It’s rigorously studied, adaptable, and practical. Clients learn to notice patterns, test beliefs, and build coping strategies that last.

How to Improve Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Skills

1. Use digital supports: Thought records, sleep diaries, and tools like CBT-i Coach for carryover between sessions.
2. Keep learning: Ongoing coursework, journals, and case consultation.
3. Strengthen alliance: Collaborate on agendas, goals, and homework. Repair ruptures quickly.
4. Blend mindfulness: MBCT elements can boost attention and emotion regulation.
5. Emphasize real-world practice: Homework that is specific, doable, and reviewed.
6. Seek supervision: Tape review, feedback, and fidelity checks sharpen technique.

How to Display Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Skills on Your Resume

5. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

DBT, developed by Marsha M. Linehan, combines behavioral change strategies with mindfulness and acceptance. Core skills: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. It’s effective for BPD and also for mood, substance use, eating disorders, and PTSD.

Why It's Important

DBT teaches clients to hold two truths at once—acceptance and change—while reducing self-harm and improving relationships. Structure plus compassion.

How to Improve Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills

1. Commit to formal training: Foundational and advanced workshops, plus ongoing refreshers.
2. Join a consultation team: Peer accountability, case review, burnout protection.
3. Deepen mindfulness: Personal practice strengthens your teaching.
4. Adapt skillfully: Tailor modules to client culture, goals, and capacities while maintaining core principles.
5. Network with practitioners: Share tools, troubleshoot barriers, exchange materials.
6. Protect your bandwidth: Self-care and boundaries keep the work sustainable.

How to Display Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills on Your Resume

6. Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, client-centered approach that strengthens a person’s own motivation for change by exploring ambivalence without pressure or judgment.

Why It's Important

It boosts engagement, honors autonomy, and unlocks change talk—fuel for forward movement across settings from addictions to health behaviors to therapy dropout prevention.

How to Improve Motivational Interviewing Skills

1. Listen actively: Reflect, affirm, and avoid the righting reflex.
2. Lean into empathy: Accurate understanding invites honesty and hope.
3. Use OARS: Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflective listening, Summaries.
4. Normalize ambivalence: Explore both sides without rushing the decision.
5. Train and get supervision: Calibration matters; practice with feedback.
6. Review recordings (with consent): Spot missed reflections and fine-tune timing.
7. Practice relentlessly: Short MI-consistent moments add up.

How to Display Motivational Interviewing Skills on Your Resume

7. Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis, rooted in Freud’s work and expanded by many schools, explores unconscious conflicts and desires through methods like free association, dream work, and transference analysis. The aim: deeper insight and enduring change.

Why It's Important

It illuminates patterns that hide in plain sight, enhances self-awareness, and supports complex, long-term growth when surface-level strategies aren’t enough.

How to Improve Psychoanalysis Skills

1. Keep studying: Contemporary theory, diverse perspectives, case seminars.
2. Integrate wisely: Blend analytic concepts with modalities like CBT and DBT when useful.
3. Nurture the alliance: Attunement, validation, and thoughtful pacing.
4. Use supervision and peer consults: Fresh eyes uncover blind spots.
5. Do your own work: Personal therapy or analysis clarifies countertransference and sharpens empathy.

How to Display Psychoanalysis Skills on Your Resume

8. Group Facilitation

Group facilitation means guiding process and dynamics so members feel safe, heard, and engaged—turning conversation into connection and collective problem-solving.

Why It's Important

Groups amplify empathy and skill-building. Good facilitation reduces conflict, increases participation, and helps members learn from each other, not just the leader.

How to Improve Group Facilitation Skills

1. Prepare with intention: Clear goals, structured agendas, and awareness of likely dynamics.
2. Champion inclusion: Invite quieter voices, set norms, co-create safety.
3. Manage conflict: Name tensions, set boundaries, redirect productively.
4. Communicate clearly: Open questions, concise directions, timely summaries.
5. Use experiential exercises: Targeted activities spark insight and practice.
6. Evaluate and iterate: Gather feedback, adjust format and flow.

Helpful resources to explore: American Psychological Association materials on group therapy, facilitation toolkits, and guidance from national behavioral health agencies.

How to Display Group Facilitation Skills on Your Resume

9. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

MBSR, developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, teaches mindfulness meditation to help people relate differently to stress, pain, anxiety, and low mood. Evidence-backed, accessible, and practical.

Why It's Important

It strengthens emotional regulation and resilience. Clients learn to observe, not fuse; respond, not react.

How to Improve Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Skills

1. Deepen personal practice: Regular meditation, mindful movement, and informal mindfulness.
2. Pursue ongoing education: Teacher development, retreats, and current research.
3. Adapt with care: Adjust practices for cultural fit, trauma sensitivity, and accessibility.
4. Use technology thoughtfully: Apps, recordings, and prompts to sustain between-session practice.
5. Foster community: Groups, practice circles, and peer support.
6. Seek supervision: Reflective practice with experienced teachers strengthens delivery.

How to Display Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Skills on Your Resume

10. Trauma-Informed Care

Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) recognizes the prevalence and effects of trauma and centers safety, trust, choice, collaboration, and empowerment in every interaction.

Why It's Important

It reduces re-traumatization, strengthens engagement, and supports recovery by honoring survivors’ experiences and control over care.

How to Improve Trauma-Informed Care Skills

1. Educate continuously: Foundations of trauma, neurobiology, and recovery pathways.
2. Listen with empathy: Validate, pace carefully, and respect boundaries.
3. Establish safety: Predictable environments, transparent processes, and clear consent.
4. Empower clients: Collaborative treatment planning and shared decision-making.
5. Work across disciplines: Coordinate with medical, social, and community supports.
6. Practice clinician self-care: Attend to vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue.
7. Gather feedback: Ask what helps and what harms; then refine.

How to Display Trauma-Informed Care Skills on Your Resume

11. Psychological Assessment

Psychological assessment blends interviews, observation, standardized testing, and collateral data to understand functioning, clarify diagnosis, and guide treatment.

Why It's Important

It improves diagnostic accuracy, informs targeted interventions, and tracks outcomes over time. Good assessment saves time and prevents missteps.

How to Improve Psychological Assessment Skills

1. Advance your education: New instruments, updated norms, and evolving best practices.
2. Use multi-method approaches: Tests plus interviews plus real-world data.
3. Build cultural competence: Select and interpret measures with cultural and linguistic humility.
4. Hold to ethics: Informed consent, confidentiality, appropriate use, clear communication of results.
5. Collaborate: Integrate input from medical providers, schools, and families when relevant.
6. Invite client feedback: Align assessment goals with client concerns.
7. Adopt fit-for-purpose tech: Secure digital administration, scoring, and reporting.

How to Display Psychological Assessment Skills on Your Resume

12. Electronic Health Records (EHR)

Electronic Health Records are secure, real-time digital charts that support documentation, care coordination, e-prescribing, and outcome tracking. For mental health, platforms such as Epic, Cerner, and TherapyNotes offer templates, treatment plan tools, scheduling, and telehealth integration.

Why It's Important

EHRs streamline notes, improve data accuracy, enable team communication, and support compliance with privacy and security rules. Better information flow, better care.

How to Improve Electronic Health Records (EHR) Skills

1. Enhance usability: Customize templates, smart phrases, and workflows for your practice.
2. Improve interoperability: Use standardized data fields and exchanges to connect with labs, PCPs, and referral partners.
3. Support integrated care: Link mental health, primary care, and psychiatry for shared plans and coordinated follow-up.
4. Elevate privacy and security: Strong access controls, encryption, audit logs, and two-factor authentication.
5. Use analytics: Track outcomes, no-show rates, and caseload metrics to drive quality improvement.
6. Embed telehealth: Seamless video visits, consent, and billing in the same system.

How to Display Electronic Health Records (EHR) Skills on Your Resume