– Mental Health Counselor Interview Questions –
Mental health counselors provide emotional counseling and guidance to individuals suffering from mental and behavioral disorders. As clients may display potentially harmful behavior, be prepared to discuss how you would offer adequate guidance to volatile individuals. Read on to find out more.
Mental illness is receiving lots of attention in the national spotlight. According to the National Institute of (NIMH), 18.5% of adults, aged eighteen and older, had been diagnosed with a mental illness during 2013.
Mental Health Counselor Responsibilities
1. Provide crisis intervention services.
2. Conduct psychosocial and/or trauma-specific assessments
3. Assess client functioning and develop an individualized treatment plan within 30 days
that is periodically re-assessed.
4. Provide individual, group, and family therapy to clientele at the center and at
satellite locations.
5. Maintain case files including session case notes, treatment plans, monthly progress
reports, telephone consultations, and termination summaries.
6. Provide testimony of fact for the county criminal and civil courts that pertain to the
center’s Mental Health Services cases.
7. Provide diagnosis and billing information monthly on all cases seen.
8. Collect data and submit client mental health statistics to Clinical Director and/or
Supervisor.
9. Prepare and present cases for clinical review.
10. Coordinate with Clinical Director or Supervisor on all cases needing
psychiatric/psychological consultation.
11. Comply with the Mental Health Services Policies and Procedures Manual.
Assist the Clinical Director or Supervisor in preparing monthly Mental Health Services
report.
12. Take part in scheduled case staffing and those held on an as-needed basis.
Job Requirements
➧ Master’s Degree in a mental health-related field; or
➧ A registered student in a formal graduate program in a mental health-related
➧ A professional license to practice independently as a Licensed Professional Counselor, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Licensed Psychologist, Licensed Master/Clinical Social Worker;
➧ A requirement to attend supervision with a licensed mental health professional consistently.
➧ A training plan requiring 10 contact hours of specialized, trauma-focused mental health training, clinical consultation, clinical supervision, peer supervision, and/or mentoring within the first 6 months of association,
➧ Demonstrated relevant experience prior to Prior relevant experience as a practicing mental health professional working with the abused
➧ Specialized clinical knowledge and advanced clinical skill in the areas of assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders.
Mental Health Counselor Interview Questions
Category 1
➧ What do you do for a living?
➧ How would you describe what you do?
➧ What does your work entail?
➧ How did you get started?
➧ What do you like about what you do?
➧ How do you make money/or how are you compensated?
➧ What is most challenging about what you do?
➧ What brings you the most satisfaction as a Mental Health Counselor?
➧ Why is medication important for some clients to progress in their counseling?
➧ How do you help clients set goals for counseling?
➧ How do you measure progress?
➧ Provide a time when you dealt calmly and effectively with a high-stress situation.
➧ Provide an experience in which you effectively provided care to a mentally ill, emotionally disturbed, or developmentally delayed patient.
➧ Name a time when your patience was tested. How did you keep your emotions in check?
Category 2
➧ What have you found to be the best way to monitor the performance of your work and/or the work of others? Share a time when you had to take corrective action.
➧ Who sets the pace of therapeutic change?
➧ How do you develop a therapeutic alliance?
➧ What methods do you use when facilitating treatment adherence?
➧ Is there any type of client you refuse to treat?
➧ How do you ensure continued professional growth?
➧ How should we address the increase in serious mental illness among college students?
➧ Have you ever found yourself “mothering” a client?
➧ What is one of your biggest growing edges as a mental health professional?
➧ Do you practice in your own life that which you find important for your clients?
➧ Is counseling more of an art or a science?
➧ How do you match the pace of the session to the client’s needs?
➧ Have you ever used an approach that wasn’t evidence-based?
➧ Are you more solution-focused or process-oriented?
➧ What is your definition of an authentic human being?
➧ Have you ever expressed intolerance for a patient?
➧ How do you ensure self-disclosure?
Category 3
➧ Give an example of a time you used silence in a session.
➧ Discuss: Therapeutic alliance trumps theory.
➧ Do you always have an intended outcome when working with a client?
➧ Do you seek systematic feedback from your clients about outcomes?
➧ How do you maintain the confidentiality of clients?
➧ What experience have you had with crisis situations and how did you handle it?
➧ What do you do for self-care?
➧ Provide an experience in which you successfully encouraged a patient to develop work skills, to enhance interpersonal skills or develop social relationships through an activity.
➧ Share an effective method you have used to influence patients’ behavior, such as through communication, interaction, teaching, counseling, and/or befriending.
➧ Share an experience in which you successfully measured patients’ physical condition.
Category 4
➧ Share an effective method you have used to influence patients’ behavior, such as through communication, interaction, teaching, counseling, and/or befriending.
➧ Tell me about a time when you developed your own way of doing things or were self-motivated to finish an important task.
➧ What experience do you have conducting psychosocial assessments? What general types of assessment tools§ have you used or for which you have received training in order to administer, score, and interpret data?
What types of evidence-based and/or§ trauma-specific assessments have you used?
➧ What developmental stage/age client is your favorite to work with and why? Least favorite and why?
What is your process for developing a treatment plan and what do you consider the most important elements to include?
Category 5
➧ What are your experiences with the individual (child and adult), group, and family counseling? Please consider ages, special circumstances, etc.
Discuss any specialized training, such§ as TF-CBT, that you have received and how you have applied it in counseling sessions. Tell us about the counseling session§ you consider being your best session and why.
➧ What tools and strategies do you used to stay organized? What is/would be your preferred§ system of maintaining case notes, completing timely documentation and tracking service data?
What types of mental health data have you previously tracked? What methods did you used to track§ data and for what purposes?
➧ How would you adhere to confidentiality policies while working within a multidisciplinary team environment?
What professional membership organizations are you a current member of?
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StudentsandScholarship Team.
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