Mental Health Technician job description
1,038 verified openings in Behavioral & Mental Health
Job postings for this work run under several titles at once: behavioral health technician, mental health associate, residential aide, licensed psychiatric technician. BLS counts them all as psychiatric technicians, 161,500 jobs in 2025 across offices of mental health practitioners, private psychiatric hospitals, residential facilities, social assistance agencies, and outpatient centers. Median pay was $45,130 in May 2025, in a band narrow by healthcare standards, $35,090 to $60,750.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
This is the role closest to the patient for the length of a shift. That means direct nursing and personal care for people with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities, leading prescribed individual and group therapy sessions, drawing patients into social and recreational activity, taking temperatures and blood pressures, and reporting unusual behavior or physical symptoms up to medical staff. Restraining a violent, potentially violent, or suicidal patient by verbal or physical means is part of the job and rates high on the list. Many technicians also give oral medications or injections on a physician's order, interview new patients for admission, and escort patients to appointments, working under physicians and registered nurses alongside psychologists, counselors, and social workers.
Common Skills and Technologies
Social perceptiveness, active listening, and monitoring are the three this work turns on, since catching a change early is most of what the unit needs. There is no specialist software. Technicians chart in whatever medical records system the facility runs and use Microsoft Excel, Word, and Outlook for logs and handovers. The instruments are physical, thermometers and blood pressure gauges, and experienced technicians train the new ones on unit procedure, a duty O*NET lists for the occupation.
Education, Training, and Career Path
Typical entry is a postsecondary certificate. Community colleges run them under both the psychiatric technician and behavioral health technician labels, covering basic nursing skills, psychology, anatomy, and pharmacology. What people hold is mixed, the three biggest groups being some college at 40 percent, a bachelor's at 30 percent, and a high school diploma at 20 percent. Some states license technicians, some employers prefer a degree, and everyone learns the rest on the floor, which is Job Zone Three, O*NET's vocational and associate degree tier. Counted together with psychiatric aides, the occupation's projected growth to 2035 is 18 percent, and between them they produce about 21,900 openings annually.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-2053.00 Psychiatric Technicians, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-2053.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-2053, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes292053.htm. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/psychiatric-technicians-and-aides.htm.