I have met quite a few people who considered becoming a therapist as a second career at midlife, often after experiencing serious mental health issues and recovery. You don't mention your age and current profession but the following is the advice I usually give people when they bring up similar things. It is great that you have so much interest and enthusiasm and perhaps you would become a truly outstanding therapist, but I would consider practical elements before making a decision/commitment and they will contribute a lot to how fulfilled you would feel with the choice. There is a lot of (usually quite expensive) training going into becoming a licensed therapist and it can be quite competitive. It also won't earn you very much money during those years and perhaps even later if you don't want to have a private practice. Depending on the location, you might compete for jobs with people who went into it immediately at the beginning of their education and career and are already much more advanced at your age (unless you are quite young). There is also the element that it might not end up being as rewarding a career as you imagine now - depending on the specific mental health concerns you would be interested in, it may not be packed with successes for you as someone helping people to recover. If you can do it more because it interests you regardless of outcome, you might turn out happier more consistently and not become jaded. Also, especially if you want to work for organizations rather than becoming independent, you will inevitably deal with a lot of the BS of the system and others in the profession and might have to face a lot of antagonism and even ill will if you openly want to think/practice differently. I personally believe thinking that you can be above all that by the virtue of your own morals and conduct is a bit naive, even for a private practitioner.

I have a PhD in biology and in the last 10 years have been doing mental health-related research in academia, meeting and working with lots of therapists and psychiatrists. Many of them split their time between their clinical practices and research, which is absolutely doable and many people like it a lot, but can be challenging and demanding. If you see yourself as someone doing decent research in the future, I would probably get into a clinical psychology program as it tends to be more science-heavy and you can build connections more easily IMO and you get to learn more about the neuroscience aspects of mental health, which are important to know in this era if you want to be effective, especially if you are interested in stuff that is more brain/body-based. There is ample room for doing research related to trauma and early life experiences - this is also an area where I do some of my work and it can be super interesting as we actually get to know why those experiences can be so powerful and generate long-term, often life-long struggles, why it is so difficult to heal etc. I ended up doing most of my research in an area that I personally experienced and recovered from and all the knowledge helps me a lot with my personal journey as well still, knowing my tendencies and predispositions. I can also use my personal experiences to guide my research and the work is much more inspiring for me than other areas I worked on before, which had nothing/little to do with my own life. This subjectively-driven focus is very common in clinicians as well.

A few years ago I also considered training to become a T but rejected the idea in part for the practical considerations I mentioned above and because I figured I don't have the right personality for it - not so much of a helper kind of person and I get easily frustrated with persistent stuckness,I am also much more technical than interpersonal, likely would not have the patience. I find education and mentoring much much more suitable and fulfilling and it satisfies my drive to help people in ways I know I am competent. I think it was the right decision for me especially given how critical and skeptical I became about therapy with time and experience, but I get to interact with clinicians a lot and that can be fun and productive. So there are definitely different ways of satisfying the motive to do useful things in mental health. I also do some clinically-oriented research in collaborations that have elements of therapy or developing treatments/tools for it. If you have an interest in EMDR, that could be an exciting area for research as it is definitely quite organic and there is so little understood about how it works. Could combine interests in trauma and the science of memory processes nicely.

I have also come across some people (including on this forum) who became therapists largely or partly driven by the hurt and trauma they experienced as clients in the past. One important factor there, IMO, is to be able to overcome the past adverse effects enough be think/practice in a realistic manner and have an ability to see things from many angles. Not to get carried away with some simplistic, subjective (usually not quite correct) perception that one is better than everyone else and understands everything better, then use traumatized people to reinforce and validate self-importance and anger.