Crisis Counselor Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a crisis counselor. You can use our job description template in this article to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a crisis counselor.
Who is a Crisis Counselor?
A Crisis Counselor offers assistance to those who are in need. After a crisis incident, a crisis counselor offers one to three times of short-term assistance to assist a person in regaining control. Crisis counselors offer resources for long-term care if necessary while helping clients.
A terrorist attack or natural catastrophe are examples of perilous events that people in need of crisis counseling may have recently gone through. Due to mental turmoil, sometimes brought on by a long-ago event, they can consider harming themselves or other people. An example of this would be a soldier or someone who suffers from PTSD. Crisis counselors must know how to handle the usual occurrences and trauma brought on by numerous circumstances to provide the right resources to their clients. Some crisis counselors specialize in helping certain groups of people, including moms with young children or veterans. Others focus on specific crises, such as abrupt death.
Crisis counselors refer patients to ongoing services, such as bereavement therapy. They may advise and assist patients with effective coping mechanisms in understanding their feelings. They could provide their patients with a psychological justification for their feelings. These will help patients have a better grasp of their mental health.
Crisis Counselor Job Description
Below are the crisis counselor job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
The duties and responsibilities of the Crisis Counselor include the following:
- Evaluate and assess people struggling with mental health issues, substance misuse, or emotional issues; they may be suicidal, sad, schizophrenic, or aggressive.
- Create and carry out customized individual plans for customers to help with issue identification, minimization, or resolution, and guarantee safety.
- Counsel and advise people going through a severe emotional or mental crisis in person and over the phone.
- Assess the waiting patients and advise the medical professionals whether to release or retain them.
- Connect with clients to neighborhood organizations and assess whether people qualify for involuntary detention.
- Consult supervisors, other staff members, and medical and mental health experts on the condition and disposition of clients.
- Collaborate with the client’s family to help them comprehend and handle the patient’s issues.
- Report and record observations of client behavior and development.
- Monitor individual behavior and progress to verify that dispositions and referrals are appropriate.
- Establish communication channels to give guidance and information to the public, neighborhood groups, and law enforcement.
- Attend necessary meetings, seminars, and training sessions.
- Maintain a variety of data used in the creation of reports.
Qualifications
- A bachelor’s degree in social work, psychology, counseling, health, nursing, behavioral sciences, guidance, and education
- A master’s degree in psychology, education, or a related discipline may be advantageous
- Mental Health License (Preferable)
- At least one year of experience in the field of mental health
Essential Skills
Here are the skills you require to excel in your career as a Crisis Counselor:
- Empathy
- Interpersonal
- Organizing
- Self Awareness
- Nonjudgmental
- Calmness
- Crisis Management
- High-stress Tolerance
- Listening
- Flexibility
- Patience
- Professionalism
- Sense of Humor
Empathy
The ability to comprehend and experience another person’s feelings is known as empathy. Crisis counselors frequently show empathy when dealing with clients, since they might need to console someone who has gone through a horrific experience or suffered a loss. For instance, if a client lost their job, a crisis counselor would try to connect by talking about a time when they had work-related anxiety. The client may feel more at ease expressing their problem and identifying solutions.
Interpersonal
Because they deal with people from various social backgrounds, crisis counselors must love dealing with people and possess strong interpersonal and communication skills.
Organizing
Crisis counselors, like social workers, must keep the history of each of their clients up to date. Being organized is necessary for this. They must prioritize administrative chores including producing progress reports, follow-ups, and goal-setting.
Self Awareness
The client is the main consideration while looking at crisis counseling techniques, and this is appropriate. However, a client may frequently bring up distressing recollections from her history. Effective crisis counselors have spent time in therapy or other self-awareness programs to process personal experiences. They are also aware of their triggers. When clients bring up topics that have personal significance to them, a professional crisis counselor can sympathize with them without getting personally interested or moved.
Nonjudgmental
As a crisis counselor, you may encounter clients who have engaged in behavior that you don’t find acceptable or have committed crimes. When you are being judgemental, clients can tell, and they may disconnect, leaving you unable to help them. An effective crisis counselor should be open to listening without judging individuals who are struggling. You may provide a more sympathetic ear and help your clients in a secure setting as a nonjudgmental counselor.
Calmness
You must know how to maintain composure in the face of pandemonium since clients who come to see you are in a very emotional condition. One of the most vital crisis counseling abilities is the capacity for calmness. Effective crisis counselors don’t retaliate when their clients yell or threaten them. Strong emotions require you to be entirely supportive without interfering; otherwise, you may escalate the tense situation and make the client reluctant to share more details with you.
Crisis Management
The ability to assist others in overcoming emotional difficulties is called crisis intervention. Crisis counselors frequently employ their crisis intervention abilities when working with clients going through a crisis or emergency. For instance, if a client phones the center during a panic attack, the crisis counselor may utilize crisis intervention techniques to calm the client and provide them with tools to help them cope with their worry.
High-Stress Tolerance
If you work in a crowded crisis counseling center or answer phones for a suicide hotline, you could even encounter them regularly, therefore you need to be able to handle chaotic and dramatic circumstances well. You’ll find yourself in uncomfortable, stressful circumstances, but you can’t let that tension spill over into your personal life or you won’t make it far in the business.
To decide if a client is experiencing a crisis and the appropriate level of care, crisis counselors must objectively evaluate each situation. Strong problem-solving and critical thinking abilities are necessary for this.
Listening
Although it might seem obvious, being a crisis counselor requires a deep understanding of listening effectively. A crisis counselor must pay attention to what is said and what it means in the context of that specific client. Consider the delivery, substance, and context.
Additionally, a counselor must be able to listen for things that aren’t being expressed. In a session, what a client withholds might be just as telling as what is spoken.
Most significantly, a crisis counselor should be able to listen without passing judgment or making any conclusions. Clients will come to you with challenging and complex concerns and need to feel comfortable speaking openly and without fear of embarrassment or feeling as though their counselor has made assumptions.
Being non-reactive and understanding the distinction between observation and evaluation can help you as a counselor make accurate evaluations and build rapport with your clients.
Flexibility
Crisis counselors are adaptable in their worldviews and have a thorough grasp of multicultural concerns in therapy practice. Each client will differ in terms of their history, experiences, and level of participation in the therapeutic relationship, thus it is important to have the ability to switch between perspectives dependent on the client.
Another crucial aspect of flexibility is understanding when a client and counselor may not be a good fit. One quality of a competent counselor is their ability to communicate when something isn’t working and then offer to send the client to another expert who might be able to help them more effectively. A skilled counselor should avoid trying to satisfy all of their clients’ needs.
Patience
The capacity to wait is known as patience. Because they may have to wait for their clients to talk about a horrific incident or express how they are feeling, crisis counselors frequently need patience. When working with a client who is going through severe emotions, patience may also assist crisis counselors to remain controlled and peaceful. They can use this to assist their clients in overcoming an emotional crisis.
Professionalism
The ability to behave responsibly and maturely is professionalism. Crisis counselors must maintain calm and show consideration for other people’s time since they frequently interact with clients in emotional distress. Being on time is another aspect of professionalism; crisis counselors should show up for work on time and depart when their shift is finished.
Sense of Humor
Crisis counselors listen to some gruesome, challenging, and sometimes painful tales. However, it’s OK for counselors and clients to chuckle while going through the process.
Timing is crucial in situations like these, of course, but creating a rapport with someone to the point where a sense of humor is shared is a relevant skill. Humor is a useful tool in the therapeutic setting, and its usage should be carefully considered.
How to Become a Crisis Counselor
Below are the steps to take to become a Crisis Counselor:
Step One: Complete a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, Social Work, or a Related Branch of Medicine
Getting your bachelor’s degree is the first requirement for working as a crisis counselor. When students concentrate their bachelor’s degree studies on a counseling-related discipline, such as psychology, social work, or sociology, they may cut down on their time spent in school. However, a career in counseling is still possible with a bachelor’s degree in an area unrelated to mental health.
If a student has a bachelor’s degree in a discipline unrelated to counseling and completes specific necessary coursework, some master’s in counseling degree programs will accept them. There are routes to becoming a crisis counselor at every stage, regardless of your educational background or line of employment.
Step Two: Get your Master’s in Counseling
If you don’t have a bachelor’s degree in psychology, human services, or another health-related profession, a master’s degree offers an alternate path to becoming a certified crisis counselor, though it’s not necessary. Students who enroll in a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling learn how to use crisis management strategies to address the mental, behavioral, and emotional needs of different groups.
Students who enroll in master’s degree counseling programs are taught evaluation, treatment planning, psychotherapy, and therapeutic support strategies.
Step Three: Undertake Clinical Experience
Real-world clinical experience, such as an internship and supervised practicum, is frequently required for master’s degree programs in counseling. These experiences prepare students for certification and licensing following graduation. Students complete a certain number of clinical counseling hours under the supervision of a licensed/certified counselor in addition to in-person talks and assigned readings.
Step Four: Pass Certification and Licensure Tests
The certification criteria for crisis and trauma counseling differ based on the state the crisis counselor works in and what the company demands for the position. While some administrative and entry-level crisis counseling positions do not require licensure, most counseling specialties do for counselors to accept insurance payments.
A background check, references, and a state-recognized counselor test are often necessary to obtain a license. The National Counselor Examination (NCE) and the National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination (NCMHCE) are two tests offered by the National Board for Certified Counselors.
Where to Work as a Crisis Counselor
Crisis counselors are employed in a variety of places, including government offices, community centers, mental health facilities, places of worship, and homeless shelters.
A crisis counselor may work in clinics, crisis hotlines, and emergency rooms, among other places. They can also be discovered in humanitarian organizations and military camps. Their responsibilities may change based on where they work according to the nature of the position.
Crisis Counselor Salary Scale
The average yearly salary for a crisis counselor is $47,987, or around $23.07 per hour, which amounts to $922 each week or $3,998 per month in the United States. The salary per year might range from $29,000 to $73,000.
In the United Kingdom, a crisis counselor makes an average pay of £25,213 per year.
In Canada, a crisis counselor makes CA$ 45,000 a year, or CA$ 23.08 an hour. Most experienced professionals earn up to CA$ 62,506 a year, while entry-level occupations start at CA$ 38,854 annually.
A crisis counselor makes an average annual pay of €32,761 or about €16 per hour in Germany.
Crisis counselors in Australia make an average of AU$ 33.77 per hour and AU$ 66,267 per year.
Crisis Counselors make an average of €42.61 per hour in Ireland, or €84,115 per year.
In Nigeria, the average monthly salary for a crisis counselor is approximately ₦270,000. From ₦128,000 to ₦524,000 is the salary range.