How to take the Children’s Mental Health Certificate

First of all, it must be made clear that there is currently no national entry-level professional qualification such as "Children's Mental Health Certificate" in my country's National Vocational Qualification Catalog. What everyone can apply for on the market are basically training certificates issued by various industry associations and social training institutions. They can only prove that the holder has participated in relevant training, and they do not have professional validity, nor are they a necessary threshold for entry into the industry.

When I accompanied Xiao Zhou, a social worker who works in children's services in the community, to inquire about relevant applications a while ago, I found that many organizations deliberately blurred this nature in their promotions, boasting that "with a certificate you can open a child psychology studio" and "it is necessary to get a job", which is completely exaggerated. If you are engaged in early childhood education, child care, or children's social work, and want to systematically learn knowledge related to child psychology and get a certificate for reference by the service recipients, then you can apply for a program from a formal institution. Generally, a college degree or above is required. Those with education, psychology, and medical related backgrounds can apply directly. If not, many programs also accept applications from practitioners with more than one year of relevant work experience. After registration, you must complete thirty or forty hours of online or offline training. The content basically covers the characteristics of each stage of child development psychology, identification of common emotional and behavioral problems, parent-child communication skills, and introduction to intervention for mild psychological problems. After completing the study, you will take a unified online exam. Most of them are multiple-choice questions plus a few case analysis questions. If you pass the exam, you can get the certificate. The whole cycle usually takes 2-3 months. The cost of formal projects is mostly between 1500-3000. If you encounter "package courses" that charge thousands or even tens of thousands more, you have to take a detour. Most of them charge IQ tax.

Nowadays, the industry’s views on this type of certificate are quite divided. Most front-line child service practitioners think it is very practical. After all, many people have not been exposed to systematic psychological knowledge before. The process of preparing for the exam can make up for the knowledge system. Having a certificate can also make parents feel more at ease; but full-time Most clinical psychological counseling practitioners do not recognize this type of certificate. After all, the training in many institutions is just a formality, or even handing over a wallet. Many certificate holders cannot even distinguish between depression and normal low mood. If they encounter children with psychological problems, they will give blind guidance, which will easily delay things. I once met a teacher from a day care institution who spent more than 8,000 yuan to buy a so-called "senior child mental health instructor" certificate. When he met a child with attention deficit tendencies, he thought the child was deliberately mischievous and told the parents to strictly discipline and suppress the child. As a result, the child became more tired of learning. In the end, the parents came to find out that his certificate had no professional validity at all, and he had not even learned the most basic knowledge of identifying children's psychological abnormalities.

If you want to do professional work related to children's mental health for a long time, instead of taking this kind of training certificate, it is better to take a more standardized path: if you want to provide public welfare children's psychological services, you can take the social worker certificate and then go in the direction of psychological social work; if you want to provide paid psychological consulting services, you can systematically study relevant courses in clinical psychology and take the registered psychologist or registered supervisor qualifications; if you want to do clinical work related to child psychiatry, you must take the medical qualification certificate and follow the path of a practicing physician. These are the formal qualifications generally recognized by the industry. Think clearly about your needs before taking the exam, and don’t be fooled by the agency’s marketing rhetoric and spend money unnecessarily.