Choosing the direction of your career can be a tough decision to make for many as there are many opportunities you are interested in. In this article, we are focusing on whether a mental health position is better for you. There is a certain kind of individual that is required for these positions.
Interpersonal relationships are very important when it comes to working with people dealing with a mental illness. And you should be able to read what a person doesn’t say such as how they communicate with their body language. If you have personality traits such as self-awareness and patience, you are suited to pursuing a career in this field and you can look into a mental health course that can give you the foundation for it. But there are other things you need to consider in addition to patience. Mental health careers can be incredibly rewarding as you are helping a person gain their freedom and thrive but there is a lot of time and effort you have to invest. And you need to understand sometimes even your best efforts will not be able to pull somebody from the brink. Many people who go into this profession have an innate desire to help people along with compassion for people from all walks of life.
You need to understand your capabilities and the capacity to work in this field before you start getting into it. There are many other professionals you will have to interact with as well such as physicians, psychologists, housing agencies, family members of the individual, social workers, nurses etc. as there are so many people involved in supporting a person suffering from a mental illness. You will be able to connect with your community in a deeper level when you get into this career and it will give you valuable insight into the other professions involved as well. There is no expected time for mental health sufferers to get better. The journey is different for each individual. Sometimes you will end up working with one individual for a very long time and this requires a person with a well of patience. You need to reach the individual at a deeper and more personal level and this will require you to have an increased self-awareness.
You should be able to have difficult conversations with people suffering from mental health illnesses and this can be uncomfortable as you will be crossing many personal boundaries. You have to be comfortable in communicating deeply with a person and be able to read people well. So much of this work revolves around you controlling your emotions and managing them in order to be more comfortable with yourself and a variety of different situations. And there are so many surprises in store for you as every day will be different. You need to be highly adaptable in order to land on your feet. Unpredictability is always the case when it comes to human involvement and this is something you have to take on without hesitating.
