Jobs / Healthcare / 31-1133.00
Psychiatric Aides
Assist mentally impaired or emotionally disturbed patients, working under direction of nursing and medical staff. May assist with daily living activities, lead patients in educational and recreational activities, or accompany patients to and from examinations and treatments. May restrain violent patients. Includes psychiatric orderlies.
- US jobs
- 35,520
- Median wage
- $44,910 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of psychiatric aides?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Listen and provide emotional support and encouragement to psychiatric patients.
- Provide patients with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities with routine physical, emotional, psychological, or rehabilitation care under the direction of nursing or medical staff.
- Complete physical checks and monitor patients to detect unusual or harmful behavior and report observations to professional staff.
- Restrain or aid patients as necessary to prevent injury.
- Work as part of a team that may include psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, or social workers.
- Record and maintain patient information, such as vital signs, eating habits, behavior, progress notes, treatments, or discharge plans.
- Maintain patients' restrictions to assigned areas.
- Organize, supervise, or encourage patient participation in social, educational, or recreational activities.
- Provide patients with assistance in bathing, dressing, or grooming, demonstrating these skills as necessary.
- Aid patients in becoming accustomed to hospital routines.
- Serve meals or feed patients needing assistance or persuasion.
- Clean and disinfect rooms and furnishings to maintain a safe and orderly environment.
Other job titles for this occupation (32)
Developmental Aide · Mental Health Aide (MHA) · Mental Health Worker (MHW) · Psychiatric Aide · Psychiatric Assistant · Psychiatric Nursing Aide · Qualified Medication Aide (QMA) · Resident Care Technician (Resident Care Tech) · Residential Care Tech (Residential Care Technician) · Therapeutic Program Worker (TPW) · Behavior Aide · Behavior Assistant · Behavior Intervention Assistant · Behavior Support Assistant · Behavioral Aide · Behavioral Assistant · Behavioral Health Assistant · BHA (Behavioral Health Aide) · BHA (Behavioral Health Associate) · Charge Aide · Charge Attendant · Clinical Assistant · Direct Care Worker · Health Service Worker · Mental Health Assistant · Mental Health Associate · Mental Health Orderly · Mental Health Program Assistant · Neuropsychiatric Aide · Psychiatric Attendant · Psychiatric Orderly · Psychiatric Technician Assistant (Psychiatric Tech Assistant)