What is an Education Mental Health Practitioner? A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.

This week I have an online job interview for the role of an education mental health practitioner, and as part of my interview preparation I want to make sure that I have a good understanding of what the job is, what an education mental health practitioner is expected to do and more. Also, it helps that because of my neurodivergence, creating a podcast episode on the topic is a very helpful way to make me focus. Therefore, by the end of this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand what is an education mental health practitioner, what skills and experiences the role requires and so much more, including how to phrase this information in a job interview. Since I’m sure that I’ll be tested on my understanding of the role in my interview. This is somewhere that I normally fail on so I want to change that. If you enjoy learning about careers in psychology, working in education and applying psychology to improve lives, then this will be a great episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

What are Education Mental Health Practitioners?

Education mental health practitioners are mental health professionals who provide mental health support to children and young people in colleges and schools. This means that they are trained to help children and young people to manage common mental health difficulties, especially mild to moderate symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as behavioural problems.

In addition, becoming an education mental health practitioner is a great idea for people who want to make a difference, work flexible and part-time hours and I think it can be a great stepping stone towards becoming an educational or clinical psychologist. Since this position will help you to develop your clinical experience working with children and young people with mental health difficulties, and you’ll have experience offering psychological treatments and interventions. Something that a lot of people, myself included, find incredibly difficult to gain experience in despite my qualifications.

Moreover, education mental health practitioners use cognitive therapy-based interventions to address emerging mental health difficulties, and if you become an education mental health practitioner then you would be trained to support schools and colleges with whole-organisation approaches to wellbeing and mental health. This means that you might advise people on the importance and how to have good sleep hygiene, how to problem solve and advise on panic attacks. You might educate young people how to manage depression as well as anxiety, and promote approaches that improve student emotional wellbeing and health. Also, you would advise education staff and signpost them towards services so they can get further information to help staff give the right support to students.

Something that I particularly enjoy about the idea of becoming an education mental health practitioner is that if you work in a primary school or an educational setting for students with special educational needs then you might also need to work with parents and carers. I really enjoy the idea of this because I’m familiar with this from when I was a SEN teaching assistant in charge of the medical care of a type 1 diabetic student. This required me to coordinate care with teachers, other support staff, the school’s medical team and the child’s parents. As well as this means that I can apply my favourite psychological theory, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, into practice. This theory proposes that the different social systems that a child directly and indirectly interacts with has an impact on their education. This includes macro-systems like local government and school management that the child never directly interacts with.

Something that I will mention is there are points that I can already see that I would need to highlight in a job interview. I would recommend that I talk about my knowledge and experience of whole-school approaches to mental health and wellbeing, I would list some of the expectations of what an education mental health practitioner is expected to do to show I’m familiar with the role and I would talk about my experience of liaising as well.

When it comes to being familiar with whole-school approaches, I would probably draw on my understanding of restorative cultures in schools. Restorative approaches offer schools a flexible and innovative alternative to the punitive systems and sanctions that are typically used in schools, like detentions, exclusions and isolations, to manage behaviour in schools. These approaches aren’t a soft solution but they’re an additional tool that schools can use to create positive outcomes from negative behaviour and actively reinforce the view that inappropriate behaviour isn’t acceptable and it needs to be addressed. As well as restorative approaches are used in schools to help deal with bullying, truancy, classroom disruptions, friendship disputes, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown between staff and pupil as well as building a stronger sense of community and belonging.

I do talk more about restorative approaches in schools and how to develop them in another podcast episode called How to Develop a Restorative Culture in Schools.

As a result, if I was asked in an interview “what’s your understanding of the role of an education mental health practitioner” I would probably answer something along the lines of:

“An education mental health practitioner is a trained professional who works in schools and colleges to support children and young people with mental health difficulties, including mild to moderate depression, anxiety and behavioural problems. In their work, they draw on cognitive therapy-based interventions and they might be expected to advise students on how to manage their mental health difficulties, how to improve their emotional health and wellbeing and advise on sleep hygiene. Also, education mental health practitioners are expected to liaise with parents and carers if they work in a primary school or SEN setting, I have experience in coordinating care and liaising with other professionals and parents from when I was a SEN teaching assistant managing the care of a type 1 diabetic child. Every day I liaised with parents, teachers and support staff. Finally, an educational mental health practitioner supports whole-school approaches to improving emotional and mental health. I have knowledge of whole-school approaches from my education around restorative approaches and using shared language, peer support programmes and restorative everyday classroom practices, like restorative conversations.”

I am going to try and commit that mock interview answer to memory for my interview to show I understand the range of roles and duties of an education mental health practitioner.

How Do You Become an Education Mental Health Practitioner?

To become an education mental health practitioner you need to complete a year-long training course to qualify with around 60 days at university spread throughout the year. The rest of your time will be spent on work-based placements and you’ll need to do some self-study too. Also, this can be a postgraduate or graduate diploma depending on whether you already have a degree or not. Also, whilst you don’t need a degree to apply for this training programme, you will need to demonstrate your ability to work at degree level and have experience working with children and young people to support their mental health.

In addition, the course is paid for by the National Health Service and you’re guaranteed a job as part of a mental health support team in a school or college once you’ve qualified.

And something that I am very happy about is educational mental health practitioners can now register with the British Psychological Society or the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. I won’t lie. I have no idea why that makes me happy but I think it just adds another layer of professionalism to the role, and yes, I understand I’m weird at times and I’m proud of it.

Furthermore, as part of your training as an education mental health practitioner, you would be employed by a healthcare organisation but you would only work in or around education settings, like SEN schools, colleges, mainstream schools or pupil referral units as part of a mental health support team. These teams are designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people between the ages of 5 and 18 years old.

What Skills Do You Need as an Education Mental Health Practitioner?

Our final section will look at the skills you need to become an educational mental health practitioner, and this is an important section to focus on because this can help you to prepare your interview answers. Since it might be a good idea to tailor your interview answers to highlight these skills.

As a result, to be an education mental health practitioner you need to have excellent interpersonal skills, a good understanding of the education system and the ability to build close, trusting and productive relationships with children and young people. This is a reason why in my interview I need to remember to talk about a time in my former SEN school when I was able to have a very productive working relationship with a SEN student who was in isolation, because the wider example will demonstrate my ability to effectively form good, close and productive working relationships with children.

For you, you might want to think about what examples from your working life could be used to demonstrate your ability to form professional relationships with children and young people.

Some other skills include the ability to work well within a multidisciplinary team, a good understanding of mental health issues and the ability to work independently and use your initiative to think quickly on the spot in often challenging situations. For me, like I normally do, I would either draw on my experience of working in a multidisciplinary team in the Gender Identity Clinic or my learning disability placement, or discuss how I worked with other professionals to manage the healthcare of a type 1 diabetic child and I often had to make quick clinical judgements to manage his care throughout the day. This example would tap into another useful skill for this role and that is to have creativity to solve problems and tackle obstacles.

A final set of must-have skills for education mental health practitioners are strong written and verbal communication tailored to a range of audiences and effective time management for tight deadlines and managing competing demands. The example that I would draw on in an interview is again probably the diabetic care one because it shows how I had to manage my time to manage the healthcare whilst still being a teaching assistant to the rest of the education setting. Yet I would also comment on my experience of my mental health campaign to create psychology licensing degrees as I’ve had to have strong verbal and written communication skills where I’ve had to write for my podcast audience, other psychology students, heads of schools of psychology at universities as well as Members of Parliament.

For yourself, you might want to think about examples of documents, statements of any kind when you’ve had to adapt the way you’ve communicated information for different audiences. If you’ve ever worked in a mental health service then this might be explaining the same mental health information but in different ways to a client, their partner or parents or another mental health professional.

Finally, it can be useful for educational mental health practitioners to have good presentation skills and additional languages. These other languages are useful because if you work in an area with a high number of individuals and children with English as their second language then it might be useful for you to communicate with them in their native or first language. I’ve spoken before on The Psychology World Podcast during on psychology news section about how when you speak in a second or third language, it decreases your creativity. And come to think of it, it is critical that you can increase your creative problem-solving skills when considering how best to manage your own mental health and how to draw on your internal resources. This is why speaking a second language can be useful for mental health practitioners.

As this isn’t an essential criteria, I am not going to mention it during my interview because my French reading ability is really good, but I cannot speak French to save my life.

Also, good presentation skills are useful as an educational mental health practitioner because you’ll be presenting information to children and young people about sleep hygiene, managing panic attacks and their mental health and you’ll likely deliver Continued Professional Development sessions to staff. Therefore, in my interview, I’ll try to remember to mention my past experience of designing and delivering a wide range of presentations for the University of Kent’s Outreach and Widening Participation Department.

For yourself, you might want to draw on your presentation experience at university to show you have these additional skills.

Clinical Psychology Conclusion

This version of interview preparation reminds me of one of the many reasons why I flat out love this podcast, because this podcast gives me the excuse and motivation to really focus on a topic, apply knowledge and consider how to use this information to benefit me. I’ve had past podcast episodes as part of my interview preparation but I prefer how I’ve done this episode in terms of applying the information. Since you can know information like the back of your hands but if you don’t know how to either present the information in an interview or apply the information to your own life, then it’s next to useless.

I’m excited for my job interview to become a trainee educational mental health practitioner because this job sounds great, fun and really interesting. And if you like the sound of this role then set up job alerts, apply for these roles and try. You never know if you’ll be able to become an education mental health practitioner unless you try.

To wrap up today’s episode, an education mental health practitioner is a trained professional who works in schools and colleges to support children and young people with mental health difficulties, including mild to moderate depression, anxiety and behavioural problems. In their work, they draw on cognitive therapy-based interventions and they might be expected to advise students on how to manage their mental health difficulties, how to improve their emotional health and wellbeing and advise on sleep hygiene. Also, education mental health practitioners are expected to liaise with parents and carers if they work in a primary school or SEN setting. Finally, an educational mental health practitioner supports whole-school approaches to improving emotional and mental health.

I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.

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Clinical Psychology Reference

https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/psychological-therapies/roles-psychological-therapies/education-mental-health-practitioner

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