Glossary / Lexicon

Paraprofessional refers to an individual who works in a near-professional capacity under the supervision of a more highly trained person. Paraprofessionals, examples are crisis hotline workers moreover are persons with no formal clinical training, but who have been trained to assist professional mental health workers. The use of Paraprofessionals has been growing in community psychology and in the mental health field as a whole, and the results of meta-analyses suggest that Paraprofessionals may be as effective or in some cases even more effective than professionals. They are individuals without advanced education in psychology who have been trained to assist professional mental health workers.