Written by Adrian Yates, psychotherapist and hypnotherapist with nearly 20 years of clinical experience.
This page is for readers outside the UK who are asking the same painful question: something went wrong in my therapy, and I want to know whether anyone will hold my therapist to account.
The honest answer is that every country arranges this differently, and no single page can describe them all. What this page can do is give you the questions that work almost anywhere, followed by a plain outline of how things stand in several countries where many readers of this site live. Rules change, so please treat the country sections as a starting point and check the official body in your own country before acting.
If you are in the UK, the fuller guide is here: how to complain about a therapist in the UK. The sections there on what a complaint asks of you emotionally, and on the fear that nobody will believe you, apply wherever you live.
The questions that work in any country
Wherever you are, the path to a complaint runs through three questions.
The first is what your therapist actually is. Around the world, psychologists and psychiatrists are regulated professions almost everywhere, with legally protected titles and a government-backed regulator holding a register. The words counsellor, psychotherapist and therapist are a different story. In some countries they are protected titles too. In many, including some you might not expect, anyone can use them.
The second is who, if anyone, your therapist answers to. Look at your paperwork, their website, or their directory listing for a licence number, a registration number, or the name of a professional body. If nothing is displayed, you are entitled to ask, and a trained practitioner will have a clear answer.
The third is whether what happened may have been criminal. Sexual contact with a client, assault, fraud and threats are police matters in every country, whatever the therapist’s registration status. If this applies to you, the police route exists alongside any professional complaint, not instead of it.
United States
The United States regulates talking therapy more tightly than the UK does. Psychologists, licensed professional counselors, marriage and family therapists and clinical social workers are all licensed at state level, and each state has licensing boards that receive complaints from the public, investigate them, and can discipline a practitioner or revoke a licence.
Your route is through the state where the therapist practises. Searching for the name of the state together with the profession and the words licensing board complaint will usually take you to the right place, and most boards let you check a licence online first. If someone was practising a licensed profession without a licence, that is itself something the state will want to know about.
Canada
Canada handles this province by province. Psychologists are regulated everywhere through provincial colleges. For psychotherapy and counselling, several provinces have gone further than the UK. In Ontario, for example, the title psychotherapist is protected and complaints go to the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario. A number of other provinces regulate counselling therapists through their own colleges.
Where no college exists, many practitioners belong voluntarily to associations such as the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, which has its own ethics process for members. Your first step is to find out which college or association your therapist belongs to in your province, then look up that body’s complaints page.
Australia
Australia splits down the middle. Psychologists are regulated nationally through the Psychology Board of Australia under Ahpra, which has a formal notifications process for concerns about registered practitioners.
Counsellor and psychotherapist, on the other hand, are not protected titles in Australia. The two main voluntary bodies are the Australian Counselling Association and the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, and together they run a shared public register, the Australian Register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, which includes a complaints portal for the public.
Australia also has something the UK lacks. Each state and territory has a health complaints body that can receive complaints about health service providers even when the practitioner is registered with nobody at all, and in serious cases these bodies can prohibit a person from practising. If your counsellor belongs to no association, this route may still be open to you, and it is worth searching for the health complaints commissioner in your state.
New Zealand
In New Zealand, psychologists are regulated by the New Zealand Psychologists Board, while counsellors are not state regulated, with the New Zealand Association of Counsellors acting as the main voluntary body with its own ethics process.
New Zealand also gives clients an unusually broad protection. The Health and Disability Commissioner can consider complaints about any provider of health services under the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights, which reaches practitioners a professional body cannot. If you are unsure where your complaint belongs, the Commissioner’s office is a reasonable first door to knock on.
Ireland
Ireland is mid change. At the time of writing, counsellors and psychotherapists are not yet statutorily regulated, and complaints go to whichever professional body the therapist belongs to, with the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy being the largest. Statutory regulation under CORU, the state regulator for health and social care professions, has been in preparation for some years, with a registration board for counsellors and psychotherapists established and work on the psychology profession further along.
Because this is actively moving, it is worth checking the CORU website for the current position before deciding your route. What was true last year may not be true now, and for once the change is in clients’ favour.
If your country is not listed here
The same pattern repeats around the world, so the search is usually shorter than you fear. Find out whether your country regulates the profession your therapist claims. If it does, the regulator’s website will have a complaints or fitness to practise section. If it does not, look for the main professional association and its ethics process. If your therapist belongs to nothing at all, your remaining routes are the ones that apply to anybody: criminal law for criminal behaviour, and consumer law for dishonest services.
In many European countries, psychotherapy is a licensed healthcare profession with complaints handled through health authorities, so do not assume your country is as loosely arranged as the English-speaking world often is. A search for your country’s name alongside the words psychotherapy regulation complaint will usually surface the right body quickly.
The part that does not change at the border
Procedures differ. The experience of complaining does not. Wherever you live, the process will ask you to put painful events into writing, to wait longer than feels fair, and to hold steady through the possibility that your account is disputed. And wherever you live, the fear that nobody will believe you over a professional who knows your private struggles arrives with the harm itself, not because it is true.
Those parts are written about fully in the UK guide, and they belong to you just as much wherever you are reading this. Whether you complain, wait, or decide your recovery comes first, you are allowed to choose the path that protects you best.
