Why Australia Needs Counsellors More Than Ever

Maybe you've been sitting on the idea for a while. You're in a corporate job, or running a coaching business, or you've done a decade in HR or teaching, and the thought of retraining as a counsellor keeps popping up. Honestly, I don't think there's been a better time to take it seriously, because we're nowhere near having enough trained people to meet the need for mental health support in this country (and the official modelling reckons it'll get worse before it improves).

October's Mental Health Month, and this year Mental Health Australia picked "Together We Thrive" as the theme, which leans hard into connection. I like that. The thing is, connection only goes so far if there's nobody trained sitting on the other side of it, and that's where we start running short.

How short is Australia's mental health workforce, really?

Pretty short, as it turns out. Back when the federal government wrote its National Mental Health Workforce Strategy 2022-2032, it pegged the shortfall at 32% of mental health workers against the national planning target, and said that could blow out to 42% by 2030 if nobody did anything about it.

The newer figures don't make you feel any better. In April 2026, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing put out its supply and demand modelling for psychologists, and once you factor in all the demand that isn't being met right now, it estimated the shortfall of psychologists in health settings at around 57% in 2025, heading for almost 97% by 2038. Even if you go with the department's more cautious baseline, you're still looking at a gap that grows from about 3% to a bit over 28% in the same period.

It's an expensive problem to leave sitting there. The Productivity Commission, in its big mental health inquiry, estimated that mental ill-health and suicide cost Australia around $200 to $220 billion a year, with roughly $150 billion of that coming from people living with diminished health and shorter lives.

Where do counsellors fit into the fix?

Here's what I think gets missed. Whenever mental health shortages come up, people mostly mean psychologists and psychiatrists, and fair enough, but we've also got a trained counselling workforce that could be doing more than it is.

When the Australian Counselling Association's 2024 workforce census asked around, 56% of counsellors said they had room for new clients, about seven more a week each on average. Only roughly one in five practising ACA-registered counsellors actually answered, and that group alone added up to more than 7,600 extra clients a week. For the most part, the system just isn't using them.

The Productivity Commission argued that lower-intensity options like supported online treatment and group therapy would free up psychologists for people with more complex needs, and I'd argue well-trained counsellors belong in that same conversation, because a lot of what people bring to counselling (stress, grief, relationship trouble, the anxiety that builds when life gets crowded) doesn't need a psychologist's specialist assessment to be worked through properly.

Who actually makes a good counsellor?

Not always who you'd picture. In the ACA census, 85% of counsellors said they got into the work because they wanted to make a difference, and 55% said their own lived experience had something to do with it, which I find kind of reassuring. Coming to it later in life is pretty normal too, since 59% of counsellors are somewhere between 41 and 60 and only 13% are under 30.

My guess is the ones who thrive are those who can sit with somebody else's discomfort without leaping in to fix it, and they're honest with themselves about their own baggage (that's a big part of what supervision's for). Years of managing a team or coaching clients will give you a bit of a head start there, but it doesn't replace proper training.

What does proper training involve?

More than a weekend workshop, that's for sure. Counselling isn't regulated by AHPRA, so the peak bodies set the bar, and PACFA's training standards, for instance, call for a course at bachelor level or above running at least two years, with a minimum of 400 hours of live instruction plus a placement that includes at least 40 hours of client contact and 10 hours of supervision. In October 2025, the federal Health Minister also endorsed the National Standards for Counsellors and Psychotherapists in Australia, which pull education, ethics, competency and professional practice requirements into one set.

If I were comparing courses, the supervised placement is what I'd look at hardest. Theory only gets you so far, and it's the hours with real clients, followed by a debrief with your supervisor, where the learning actually sticks. Ethics deserves a close look for much the same reason, because the toughest decisions you'll face (like whether to break confidentiality when someone might be at risk) almost never play out the way the textbook says.

So where could it take you?

Further than most people assume. In the ACA census, about 36% of counsellors were self-employed, 31% were salaried and another 19% did a mix of both, and their specialties spread widely, with trauma (49%), grief and loss (40%) and family and relationships (38%) among the most common. Counsellors end up in schools and hospitals, community and disability services, government and youth work, and of course private practice.

For the entrepreneurs reading this, half of the counsellors with more than ten years in the profession are self-employed, so building your own practice is a well-worn path. On money, average annual income in the census sat around $75,000 for private practice and about $88,000 for employed counsellors, climbing to roughly $126,000 for people who combined both.

Why does a master's level qualification matter?

You can technically practise with less, and plenty of good counsellors have. But I'd argue a master's is where the profession is heading. It's already the most common qualification among ACA counsellors (35% hold a master's in counselling, rising to 42% of employed counsellors), and when the free Medicare Mental Health Check In service went looking for clinicians in early 2026, the ACA said its Level 2 (Masters) counsellors and above could apply for those permanent full-time roles, which tells you roughly where employers and government are drawing the line.

It's also about depth. A master of counselling can help you get real supervised practice before you graduate and a research pathway that can lead on to a PhD.

If this Mental Health Month has you turning the idea over again, maybe give it a bit more room this time. The need's there, and it's not going anywhere soon.