What I like about online directories and registers

Directories offer instant access to hundreds or even thousands of therapists in your area, all in one place. You can quickly narrow down your search using a variety of filters, (location, therapeutic approach, issue you’d like to work on, price, accessibility, language spoken etc, etc), and then scan through your selection of therapists to produce a shortlist to look at in more detail. The amount of space available for each therapist’s profile varies from site to site but most include a photo, personal statement, qualifications and contact details and some have links to therapists’ individual websites where you can find out more. So if you’re looking for a therapist you’d like to work with, directories can be a good place to start.

Many countries have professional bodies that offer training and qualifications for the different professions that offer therapy. These professional bodies typically have a register of members and require them to satisfy strict criteria, (such as doing ongoing development) and meet certain standards in their work in order to remain on the register. So if you have identified a therapist who may be suitable, you may be able to ask for details of their professional body’s website and use its register to check their status and qualifications.

Some countries also have national accreditation bodies for different professions that offer therapy. You could say they do ‘quality control’ on the organisations that carry out training and give qualifications to therapists. Their registers can offer another place where you can check out whether a therapist is qualified and ‘fit to practise’.

None of this guarantees the quality of the therapists’ work 100% or guarantees that you will have a positive experience with them. But it should at least mean that, at some point, they have obtained a qualification and satisfied a professional body that they are competent to do their job.

A word of caution

While some directories belong to professional bodies or charities, in reality anyone can set up an online directory and persuade therapists to sign up (and pay) to be included. So just because a therapist is listed on a directory site, it doesn’t mean you can necessarily trust the information in their profile and it’s no guarantee of the quality of their work.

I came across three directories, (NOT included below), which looked professional and had many thousands of therapist listings, but when I entered the site names on Trust Pilot (www.trustpilot.com), the reviews were consistently terrible. Clients or potential clients complained about therapists not responding, repeatedly cancelling appointments or offering very poor work. And when they complained to the directory owners about the therapists, the typical response was “we can’t be held responsible for the service provided”. So it’s good to remind ourselves that, whatever it says on the ABOUT US page, most directories are just listings – a bit like a glorified phone book.

I was more worried by one of these directories that also allows clients to book and pay for therapy sessions. Its stated mission was to improve the client experience but they also had consistently poor reviews on Trust Pilot, criticising the company for charging very high fees, unjustified cancellation charges and poor customer service.

So if you decide to search online, please be sensible and do your research thoroughly before approaching a therapist or making a payment – just as you would if you were making any other important purchase or transaction.

A few illustrative examples:

For therapists who specialise in working with couples, here are two links that might be interesting: