Marriage and Family Therapist Salary

A person interested to become a therapist should possess an urge to guide others in dealing with family issues, and saving troubled marriages from ending up in, divorce. Most importantly, the marriage and family counselor should be able to inspire the person in need and make him/her confident about betterment of their troubled family life. Marriage and family counselor salary depends upon factors such as educational qualifications and industry of their employment, such as general hospitals, local government or state government.

Marriage and family therapists are also termed as counselors providing counseling or guidance and rehabilitation to the people in society. The salary is decent and brings with it, a feeling and satisfaction of saving troubled marriages and families. It is known that an individual's behavior pattern is influenced by the family's manner of conduct or demeanor. Hence, marriage and family therapy does not focus only on the individual who needs counseling, but also involves the members of family or the people in relationship with the person. They play a vital role in not only bonding the connection between the couples, but also in maintaining sound relationship and marriage counseling. During counseling, the dialog involves questions, counter questions, confessions, suggestions and guidance, thus making an effort to strengthen the bond among family members. That is why marriage and family therapy has become an important specialty of psychology.

Salary
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary varies according to the industry. It can be summarized as:


Duties
The job description involves counseling people by employing family systems techniques and principles to address the issues related to couples and among members of a family. The conflicts between couples or family members are due to various reasons. They may be due to difference in opinion, sometimes due to their expectations not getting fulfilled by their spouse or sometimes due to social issues. These people go through emotional and mental trauma during this conflict. Here, a therapist plays a key role in molding a person's thought process related to marriage and family, so as to resolve the ongoing conflict. These counselors work to alter people's understanding about relationship and their conduct and improve communication among couples and family members to pull these people out of this emotional crisis.

Clients could be individuals, family members or couples who face marital problems. They have to deal with range of issues including marital problems, depression, mood disorders, autism, juvenile delinquency, child parents relationship issues, or sometimes other related mental disorders such as substance abuse, which is many times the cause triggering conflicts between couples or between child and parents. In such cases, they have to bridge the communication gap between the family members, because sometimes, lack of healthy dialog and communication leads to problems such as substance abuse. Developing the interaction between individuals and family members and making the client aware of his/her symptoms remains to be a challenging task for a marriage and family counselor.

Educational Qualifications
To become a licensed therapist, a person must have completed a master's degree of duration 2-3 years, coupled with 3000 hrs or 2 years of directed clinical work experience or a doctoral degree of duration 3-5 years. After completion of supervised work, a person has to pass the state recognized test or AAMFT (American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy) conducted national examination for marriage and family therapists and has to adhere with ethical codes.

This was about the job description, the educational qualifications, and the salary of therapist for marital discord and family problems. I hope this article was helpful to you.