A different license, a different SOC code, and the occupation many MFT graduates are counted under before they are fully licensed. Worth understanding even if you never hold the title.
$59,350
median salary, May 2025
491,930
employed under SOC 21-1018
Master's
typical entry qualification
How do you become a mental health counselor?
You become a mental health counselor through a different license from the MFT, usually an LPC or LPCC depending on the state. The shape is familiar, a master’s degree, supervised post-degree hours and a national exam, but the coursework rules and the exam itself are set by a separate board.
That separateness matters if you are choosing between the two. An MFT degree does not convert into a counseling license by paying a fee: states specify counseling coursework that an MFT curriculum may only partly cover, and making up the difference after graduating is expensive and slow.
Decide which license you want before you enroll rather than after. If you are unsure, look at job adverts in the area you intend to work and count which license they ask for, because that answers the question better than any comparison of the two professions in the abstract.
What does a mental health counselor do?
A mental health counselor provides assessment and talk therapy for individual clients, most often one to one across a full caseload, across anxiety, depression, trauma, substance use and the ordinary crises of a life. The training centers on the individual rather than the relationship.
In day-to-day practice the overlap with MFT work is large enough that job adverts frequently list both licenses as acceptable. Where the two genuinely diverge is what they are built to treat: an MFT is trained to work with the room, a counselor with the person.
Should you choose counseling or marriage and family therapy?
Choose counseling if you want breadth and portability, and marriage and family therapy if you want relational work as your core practice. That is the real decision, and it is worth making deliberately rather than by which program admitted you first.
Counseling licenses are recognized in more settings and by more employers, simply because the occupation is far larger. MFT licensure is more specific, which is an advantage where relational work is the point and a limitation where an employer has never hired one. Neither is the stronger credential in the abstract.
What do mental health counselors earn?
Mental health counselors earn less than marriage and family therapists at the national median, though both ranges are wide enough that the overlap is far larger than the gap.
The more useful difference is volume. This is a much larger occupation, so there are more posts, in more places, at more kinds of employer, and caseloads are easier to fill. If you are constrained by geography rather than by the kind of work you want, that matters more than a few thousand dollars of median.
Why are MFT graduates counted as counselors?
MFT graduates are counted as counselors because the federal classification follows the job title an employer uses, not the license the person holds. A pre-licensed associate working an agency caseload is very often given a counselor title.
This matters when you read wage data. Some of the people at the bottom of the counseling range are MFT graduates in their supervised years, and some of the distance between the two occupations’ medians is a difference in career stage rather than in the license itself.
What does a mental health counselor earn?
A mental health counselor earns a median salary of $59,350, with the bottom tenth under $38,940 and the top tenth over $97,590, on Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for May 2025. There is no federal occupation code for this title, so the figure comes from SOC 21-1018, Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors, which is the category it is counted inside.
The counselor range runs lower than the MFT one at the median, and the reason is compositional rather than a judgment about the work: counselors are concentrated in institutional posts, and institutional posts pay institutional salaries. The two distributions overlap almost completely, so no individual should read the gap as applying to them.
For comparison, marriage and family therapists under SOC 21-1013 have a median of $66,940. The ranges overlap heavily, so read the gap as a tendency rather than as a rule about any individual post.
Which settings employ the most mental health counselors?
Mental health counselors are spread across institutions in a way marriage and family therapists are not. Outpatient centers, residential facilities, schools and local government all employ them in tens of thousands, which is the practical reason job adverts in those settings so often name a counseling license. It also shapes the work: an institutional post usually means an assigned caseload rather than one you build, and clients who arrive through a referral route rather than by choosing you.
Where do mental health counselors train?
Mental Health Counselors train through an accredited master's degree, of which 98 exist nationally, plus 27 accredited doctoral programs serving the academic and supervision routes. Because every accredited program must disclose its own cohort outcomes, those figures are what the rankings here rest on.
- Best master's MFT programs, ranked on published outcomes
- Best online MFT programs at master's level
- Marriage and family therapist salary, by state and setting
Common questions
Is a mental health counselor the same as a marriage and family therapist?
Can you hold both an MFT and a counseling license?
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Wages and headcounts for Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors (SOC 21-1018), nationally and by state and industry. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release
- COAMFTE Directory of Accredited Programs The 98 master's and 27 doctoral program counts, and which programs are accredited. Read 2026-08-21