The gold content of the psychological counselor certificate of Mental Health Network

The psychological counselor certificate issued by the Mental Health Network is not a nationally recognized professional qualification certificate, and there is no unified "gold content" standard - if you want to use it directly as a full-time counselor to practice independently, the gold content will be infinitely close to 0； However, if it is used as a proof of entry-level learning and as an endorsement of abilities for relevant positions, it has certain practical value. How useful it is depends entirely on the scenarios you use it in and how much real skills you use it with.

Many people's misunderstanding of this type of certificate actually comes from the market gap after the country canceled the second- and third-level psychological counselor professional qualification certificates in 2017. Many institutions deliberately touted this type of training certificate as an "official alternative practice certificate" when recruiting students, deceiving many novices who have never been exposed to the industry. I have worked as an administrative assistant for two years in a psychological counseling studio in Guangzhou that has been open for six years. When I was screening resumes, I saw at least forty or fifty candidates with this certificate. The boss's attitude has always been: only regard it as a reference item for "whether you have had basic training" and will never be used as a core criterion for employment.

Last year when we were recruiting part-time public welfare consulting operators, we met two very typical candidates: one was a recent business graduate who only took this certificate and had no other relevant experience. He couldn't even figure out the boundaries of the "psychological counseling confidentiality principle"； The other is a community social worker who has been working as a community social worker for three years, and usually helps residents with emotional counseling. The purpose of taking this certificate is to systematically supplement the counseling ethics and general skills. In the end, I definitely got the latter. For that social worker, this certificate even helped him obtain an additional 200 yuan monthly job subsidy. Do you think it is useless? Neither. But for that fresh graduate, if he uses this certificate to apply for a full-time consultant position, he won't even receive an interview invitation. It's not an exaggeration to say that it is useless paper.

I have a friend who works as an Internet HR. I was so busy that I took the exam last year. I was just out of curiosity and wanted to learn some communication skills so that I could talk to employees. I didn’t expect that the company later wanted to build an internal psychological counseling post for employees. Because she had this certificate and could explain basic emotional counseling methods, she was directly transferred to be the person in charge, and her salary increased by 15%. She told everyone she met that the certificate was worth it. But there are also people who fall into the trap. A netizen complained to me before, saying that the institution told him that he could get a certificate and earn tens of thousands a year, but no one wanted the certificate. The training fee of more than 8,000 was wasted, and he turned around and said that all psychological counselor certificates are IQ taxes.

In fact, to put it bluntly, there is no such thing as "one certificate can rule the world" in the current domestic psychological counseling industry. Even the training certificates of the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Mental Health Association, which are relatively highly recognized in the industry, are essentially training qualification certificates, and are no different from the certificates of the Mental Health Network. If you really want to eat psychological counseling, the number of case studies, supervision hours, and long-term systematic training experience that you need to save later will be much more expensive and more useful than this piece of paper. I have seen too many people with various certificates who can't even handle a case for 10 hours, and they panic when they cry when they come in. At this time, let alone the certificate from the Mental Health Network, even if you have a psychology diploma from a prestigious school, no one dares to trust you to hand over a case.

Of course, this does not mean that it is completely unnecessary to take this certificate. If you are a teacher, social worker, or HR, and often deal with people, learning the emotion recognition, communication skills, and basic psychological intervention methods in the course will be very useful in itself. This certificate is proof that you have studied systematically, and can help you seize opportunities at critical moments. If you just want to get a feel for the industry first, and don’t want to spend tens of thousands to sign up for an extremely expensive long-distance class at the beginning, it is quite cost-effective to spend thousands of dollars to take this certificate and first find out whether you really like consulting and whether you can accept the work status of "listening to other people's negative emotions and still remaining neutral".

Just don't believe the hyped propaganda of the agency, such as "you can get a job with a certificate" and "it's easy to earn more than 10,000 a month". If such a good thing is really possible, aren't all the consultants in the industry who have waited five or six years to take on cases independently become fools? If you take this certificate with the mentality of looking for shortcuts, you will most likely be disappointed. ； If you take the test with the mentality of learning something, the rewards it can give you may be much more than the piece of paper itself.

After all, the gold content of any certificate is never given by the certificate itself, but by the ability of the holder. This principle is the same in any industry.