Become A Mental Health Coach: 6 Best Certifications & Courses

The global health coaching market was worth an estimated $7 billion in 2020, with consumer demand for wellbeing and mental health development providers set to rise in the foreseeable future.[1]

If you’re a mental health coach or planning to become one, this guide will show you how to start a career in the field. We’ll take you through some mental health coach certifications that may help you play a bigger professional role in improving the wellbeing of others.

How To Become A Mental Health Coach

Mental health coaching is a fascinating, challenging, and rewarding career path for aspiring coaches with a passion for wellbeing.

If you’ve considered a career in the field or are looking for a coaching niche to specialize in, there is no one right way about it.

While anyone can start from scratch, mental health coaching is a perfect next step for:

• Life, business, wellness, or executive coaches with professional experience, and who are looking to specialize
• Students of health sciences, nursing, fitness, or nutrition, and
• Mental health professionals such as doctors, nurses, or psychologists keen to broaden their service offer with coaching.

Mental health coaching is becoming a popular specialization for life coaches, and there are plenty of reputable certifications for professionals who are keen to get accredited.

Because there are so many potential pathways into mental health coaching, the following is only a rough overview of the steps involved. Some, of course, are entirely optional:

1. Research mental health coach courses.
   You may want to find an ICF-credentialed course that offers specialized training in your preferred practice area. Whether it’s wellness, mindfulness, or CBT that you’d like to apply, initial training can give you a strong foundation to inform your work with clients.
2. Get certified.
   Certification is not strictly necessary for you to practice, but it gives you a distinct advantage over uncertified coaches in your niche. The International Coaching Federation offers three levels of accreditation that can showcase your skill and experience levels: the Associate Certified Coach (ACC), Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and Master Certified Coach (MCC) credentials.
3. Find clients.
   While many coaches are experienced networkers and rely on recommendations to find coachees, we highly recommend building a website that will attract clients for you.
4. Put it into practice.
   Coaching experience is an integral part of many certification programs, so don’t wait until your packages or programs are perfect before you start to practice. Live sessions and client feedback will help you refine your approach as you go along, allowing you to think about different ways to expand or enhance your offers.

Qualifications and Requirements of Certified Coaches

So how do qualifications such as the ACC, PCC, or MCC distinguish you from your fellow mental health coaches, exactly?

Put simply, different qualifications have various requirements:

• ACC practitioners must have 60 hours of training and 100 hours of practical experience to their name to display the credential
• For PCCs, the requirement is 125 training hours and 500 coaching hours, and
• MCCs are required to have 200 hours of coach training and 2500 hours of coaching practice.

To learn more about becoming an ICF-certified mental health coach, take a look at our resource: 8 Best ICF Coaching Certification Programs and Courses.

3 Best Certifications and Online Options

Mental health coaching is becoming a popular specialization for life coaches, and there are plenty of reputable certifications for professionals who are keen to get accredited.

A few of these include:

1. The Certified Professional Coach (CPC) qualification, offered by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC), is the first of three modules in IPEC’s professional curriculum. The 10-12 month online program includes skills such as addressing the root source of your client’s challenges, helping them realize their potential, and fostering sustainable change so they can achieve their life goals.
2. The Institute for Life Coach Training (ILCT) offers an ICF-accredited Professional Certified Coach (PCC) certification for coaches who have 500 hours of practical experience under their belt. Over 18 to 24 months, this program gives you 130 training hours and a range of 30 subjects to choose from as electives.
3. Coach U’s Core Essential Program (CEP) is an ICF-accredited ACTP that covers foundational and intermediate training over a 77-hour course. Completing this course will put you at an ACC level, with practical knowledge for building a coaching business, and continued development essentials for ongoing excellence.

Top 3 Training Courses and Accredited Programs

If you’re looking for an ideal first qualification or extending your area of expertise as a coach, here are three further courses that might work for you:

Course	Details
	This 98-hour, ICF-accredited course is designed for all aspiring coaches who are closely aligned with health and/or mental health, and/or sustainability objectives. As well as a specialized mental health training unit, the program includes in-class training with ICF-credentialed coaches. The course costs $850AUD and covers a range of health-related topics such as nutrition, mental health awareness, and the characteristics of a coaching mindset.
Name	Certified Coaching Professional Program
Institution	Well College Global
Good For	All levels and professionals
Website	https://www.wellcollegeglobal.com/certified-coaching-professional-program.html

Course	Details
	Quality Mind Global is partnered with the ICF and offers a flexibly paced ‘Mind Mentor’ program that teaches key skills of practice. At the end of the program, candidates will be able to identify a client’s mental issues, help them create action plans to break away from their vicious cycles, and help them develop accountability for positive progress and recovery.
Name	Mental Health Coach Certification
Institution	Quality Mind
Good For	All levels and professionals
Website	https://www.qualitymindglobal.com/mental-health-wellness-coach-certification-programs/

Course	Details
	Kingstown College is an accredited international professional of coaching courses, working in collaboration with MindWise. The ADMHWC is a virtual course that runs for 16 months for practicing providers who are keen to extend their current coaching specialization. The course covers more than 7 modules including topics such as Positive Psychology, Resilience, Cognitive Behavioral Coaching, and Recovery.
Name	Advanced Diploma in Mental Health and Wellbeing Coaching (ADMHWC)
Institution	Kingstown College
Good For	Personal Coaches, Leadership Coaches, Executive Coaches
Website	https://www.kingstowncollege.ie/life-and-executive-coaching-courses/advanced-diploma-in-mental-health-and-wellbeing-coaching/

Are you considering a career in social work? Check out our article on Social Work Programs for Masters.

Most Helpful Digital Solution For Coaches

Getting accredited certainly isn’t the end of your professional learning journey, especially when it comes to the reality of running a growing practice.

Unfortunately, many courses tend only to touch on the practical aspects of building up your mental health coaching business. Elements like:

• Developing and delivering online coaching programs
• Planning your sessions ahead of time
• Scaling up successfully into group work, and
• Keeping clients engaged throughout your work together.

This is where a cutting-edge digital solution such as Quenza comes into play.

Quenza offers a uniquely valuable set of digital coaching tools that are designed to do all the above and more. With easy-to-use, customizable features to enhance the way you coach, you can build up your business easily and efficiently while evolving your offer as you grow.

How To Use Quenza In Your Coaching Practice

Regardless of how much mental health coaching experience you have, you can use Quenza to create and deliver all kinds of professional solutions to your clients.

Essentially, the Quenza platform acts as your online practice, with a Professional Dashboard for you and a free, client-facing app for those you coach.

With Quenza, you can:

• Design, build and share digital mental health coaching solutions such as lessons, interventions, exercises, and assessments
• Customize mental health-related templates to develop bespoke solutions, such as the Stress Management Emergency Plan shown above
• Automate the delivery of your coaching solutions to offer pre-designed programs and sequences
• Keep tabs on your coachees’ engagement and performance in real-time
• Create private notes during your sessions, or collaborate on notes with clients
• Keep clients engaged with notifications, updates, chat, and more.

Your software acts as a coaching management and client engagement solution all rolled into one, allowing you to maximize your professional impact while scaling up your business through efficiency, engagement, and personalization.

6 Unique Benefits of Quenza Software

Some of the unique ways you can use Quenza include:

1. Developing and sharing branded coaching content with Quenza White Label, as shown above
2. Offering a personalized coaching portal for your clients with the multilingual, customizable client app
3. Chatting with coaching cohorts, teams, or individual clients using Quenza Chat
4. Scaling up to programs and courses for as many as 50 participants with Quenza Groups
5. Building advanced bespoke tools using the Activity Builder Wheel of Life template
6. Designing journals for your clients using Quenza Notes, then collaborating on them with comments and observations.

It’s true that a diverse range of tools can help you manage your practice, but there is only one that helps you develop yourself and your offer as a coach: Quenza.

Final Thoughts

Demand is booming for mental health coaches, and it’s a rewarding industry to be in. If you believe in helping others overcome mindset challenges, set meaningful wellness goals, and channel their efforts toward progress, you could make a significant impact with the right skill set.

Check out the mental health coaching courses we’ve mentioned here, and you’ll be off to a powerful start.

If you’re ready to start practicing, Quenza’s $1 trial is the perfect way to start. Get designing personalized mental health coaching tools that you can share easily and effortlessly with others, so you can help them shape positive changes in their lives.

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