What does a Psychiatric Technician
actually do all day?
top skill Social Perceptivenesscore tasks 6median pay $45,130AI exposure 0/100
Psychiatric Technicians is moderately paced, mixed sitting & moving, people-heavy work.
What this job actually does all day
The representative tasks O*NET analysts recorded for this role — not a glossy job ad, the real work.
- Provide nursing, psychiatric, or personal care to patients with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities.
- Encourage patients to develop work skills and to participate in social, recreational, or other therapeutic activities that enhance interpersonal skills or develop social relationships.
- Restrain violent, potentially violent, or suicidal patients by verbal or physical means as required.
- Lead prescribed individual or group therapy sessions as part of specific therapeutic procedures.
- Monitor patients' physical and emotional well-being and report unusual behavior or physical ailments to medical staff.
- Take and record measures of patients' physical condition, using devices such as thermometers or blood pressure gauges.
Skills & environment
Bars are O*NET importance/intensity ratings, scaled 0–100 so you can compare at a glance.
The skills it demands most
What the environment feels like
Deadline pressure: moderateConflict & friction: frequently handles conflictNeed to be exact: moderateTime spent sitting: moderateContact with people: constantly dealing with people
Go deeper on this role
How this is built. Tasks, skills, and work-environment ratings come from the
U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET occupational analysis — job analysts survey real workers, so this is the
closest thing to "what the job is actually like" in public data. Skill scores are O*NET Importance
ratings (0–5) and environment measures are Context ratings (0–5), both rescaled to 0–100 here for
easy reading. This task-and-skill detail comes straight from the O*NET database — it's
pulled straight from the survey, not invented. Figures describe the typical role, not any one person's job.
