Mental Health Licensing & Regulation in Lebanon: 2026 Guide

Lebanon licenses two mental health professions outside medicine, and only two. They are the clinical psychologist and the educational psychologist.¹ Practising as either without a licence from the Ministry of Public Health is a criminal offence.³ A licence alone is not enough to practise: the Order of Psychologists must also have you on its rolls.⁷ That is the short answer.

Two limits before you read on. This page sets out what the two governing statutes say. It does not tell you how to make a complaint against a Lebanese psychologist, because we could not source that route from the primary text. And the wording below follows the Arabic of the statutes rather than the looser English used on professional websites, because the two do not always agree.

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What the law says now

Two laws govern psychology in Lebanon, and they do different jobs.

Law No. 8 of 10 February 2017 organises the profession. It was published in the Official Gazette on 16 February 2017 and took effect that day. It defines who the regulated professional is, forbids practice without a licence, sets the conditions for getting one, and attaches criminal penalties to practising without it.²³

Law No. 254 of 5 January 2022 creates the Order of Psychologists in Lebanon, published in Arabic as نقابة النفسانيين and known in English as LOPsy. It was published on 13 January 2022. It sharpens the definitions Law 8 laid down, gives the Order its functions, and makes registration with the Order a second condition of lawful practice.⁶

The division of labour matters, and it is the point most often got wrong. The Ministry of Public Health issues the licence. The Order registers you. The Ministry issues it by decision of the Minister, on the proposal of the Ministry's Director General.² The Ministry lists the clinical and educational psychologist in the same licensing channel it uses for medicine, dentistry, midwifery, physiotherapy and nursing, under a single application form.¹⁰ The Order came five years later and does not replace that.⁷

So a practitioner who says the Order licensed them has described only half of what the law asks for.

The ministry has not left this to the statute alone. On 27 November 2017 it issued two circulars, published in its own English. Circular No. 113 states that Law 8/2017 requires every practising psychologist to hold the ministry's licence, prohibits the provision of any service related to the practice of psychology without one, and says that non-compliance will result in prosecution as stipulated in the law.¹⁷ Circular No. 112 is addressed to employers. It urges institutions to ensure that everyone working in clinical or educational psychology on their premises, at any affiliated centre, or on any project they supervise, holds the ministry's licence, and to refrain from providing any service related to mental health before that.¹⁶ Both circulars also urge licence-holders to display the licence visibly at their place of work.¹⁶¹⁷

The two licensed categories

Law 8/2017 regulates a professional the Arabic calls the نفساني (nafsani). The word does not translate cleanly. It means someone holding at least a Master's degree in psychology who assesses people psychologically and provides psychological treatment without medication. The law then splits that into two categories, and there is no third.¹

Holding a psychology degree is not the regulated thing. The law is explicit that psychology is a broad science with experimental, social and educational branches. What it regulates is the practice.¹

Law 254/2022 keeps both categories and adds detail. The clinical psychologist assesses behaviour, feeling and modes of thinking, assesses psychological and mental functioning, makes recommendations, and carries out clinical interventions in a limited number of sessions before referring on where that is needed. The educational psychologist works in nurseries, schools, universities and specialised educational centres.⁶

Where “psychotherapist” sits in Lebanese law

This is the part of the scheme that is most often misdescribed, including in earlier versions of this page.

Psychotherapist is not a separate licence in Lebanon, and it is not an open title. Law 254/2022 defines the المعالج النفساني as a person who is first a clinical psychologist holding the Ministry's permit to practise as one, and who is additionally trained in non-pharmacological psychotherapy techniques through qualifying training centres. Those centres teach approaches recognised by international therapeutic schools, by the Ministry and by the Order.⁶

The law describes the work as aimed at significant cognitive, emotional or behavioural change, and says in terms that this exceeds supportive psychotherapy or the giving of advice and support.⁶

Read plainly, that has one consequence worth stating directly. A person who is not a licensed clinical psychologist, and who is not a physician, does not fall within the statutory definition of psychotherapist in Lebanon. A qualification in social work, counselling or a related field does not open a psychotherapy licence, because the law provides no such licence to open. The Order publishes lists of the psychotherapy training centres and supervisors it accredits, which is the layer that sits on top of the clinical licence rather than beside it.¹⁴

Physicians are governed by their own law, and section five below sets out where they sit.

How someone becomes licensed

Law 8/2017 sets the same conditions for both categories, differing only in the degree required.²

1. Nationality and standing. Be Lebanese, in full enjoyment of civil and political rights, and not convicted of a felony, an attempted felony, or an infamous misdemeanour.
2. School qualification. Hold the Lebanese Baccalaureate or an equivalent.
3. The degree. A Master's in psychology for the clinical category, or in educational psychology for the educational one. It must come from the Lebanese University, or from a recognised private higher-education institution in Lebanon that is licensed to teach that specialisation, or from an institution abroad where the Ministry of Education and Higher Education grants equivalence.
4. Supervised and practical training. At least 100 hours of supervised training plus 300 hours of practical training in a university centre. The statute allows this to be obtained inside the Master's programme or after it.
5. The colloquium. Pass the colloquium examination. That exam is run by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, not by the health ministry and not by the Order.¹²

The Order sets out the same route from the applicant's side, in five steps: earn the Master's, submit documents to the education ministry for equivalence, sit the colloquium, apply to the Ministry of Public Health for the licence, then apply to the Order for registration.¹³

The Order's page also describes a graduate of the Lebanese University as skipping the equivalence and colloquium steps, and going straight to the Ministry and then the Order.¹³ Law 8/2017 sets the colloquium as a condition without an exception.² So read that route as the Order's description of practice rather than as the legal rule.

One point of difference is worth flagging, because a practitioner planning their training will meet it. The Order's own page describes 400 hours of supervised training obtained within the Master's programme. The statute describes 100 supervised hours plus 300 practical hours, obtainable within the Master's or afterwards. The totals agree. The composition and the timing do not, and the statute is the instrument that governs.²

Registration with the Order carries a joining fee and an annual fee, which the Order publishes and which are set in United States dollars. Annual fees fall due before 30 June, and the Order treats a licence as expired where two consecutive years go unpaid.¹³ An application for membership must be decided within two months, and a refusal must give reasons. Where no decision is taken inside the two months, the application counts as refused, so an applicant is never left waiting without an answer. An appeal lies to the Beirut Civil Court of Appeal within fifteen days.⁷

There was also a door for people already in practice when Law 8/2017 arrived. Anyone Lebanese who held a Master's in psychology and had practised for at least five years had one year from the law taking effect to regularise, exempt from the training-hours requirement.⁵ Law 254/2022 opened a second and narrower door, for someone who had practised more than seven years without a clinical psychology degree, through an eligibility examination held once and within one year of the first Order council being elected.⁷ Both windows were time-limited, and both have closed.

Psychiatrists are on a separate scheme

A psychiatrist in Lebanon is a physician. Neither Law 8/2017 nor Law 254/2022 reaches them. They sit under the law regulating the practice of medicine, Decree No. 1658 of 17 January 1979, with Article 24 amended by Law No. 204 of 2 March 1993.¹⁵

Three things follow that are useful to a person choosing who to see.

• The Ministry of Public Health grants the licence to practise medicine. A Lebanese physician needs a recognised medical degree, the Lebanese Baccalaureate part II or an equivalent, no felony or infamous-misdemeanour conviction, and a pass in the colloquium.¹⁵
• “Specialist” is a protected title for physicians. A licensed physician may not carry it unless a specialty certificate from a recognised body is accepted through the Ministry's Specialisation Committee, and the Minister grants the title on that committee's opinion.¹⁵
• The medical Orders hold the register, not the Order of Psychologists. Lebanon has two, in Beirut and in the North.¹⁵

Prescribing sits on this side of the line. What Law 8/2017 regulates is psychological treatment without medication.¹ The ministry has put the obligation directly: a psychologist, clinical or educational, must abstain from prescribing medication in the practice of the profession, prescription being an exclusive right of physicians licensed by the ministry and affiliated to the Order of Physicians in Lebanon.¹⁷

What a licence proves, and what it does not

It proves that the Ministry accepted the degree, the training hours and the colloquium pass, and that the person has not been removed from the register. That is a real fact and worth having.

Some limits are written into the statutes themselves.

• Medical titles are closed to psychologists. A licensed clinical or educational psychologist may not use medical titles, and may not advertise in a misleading way. The law allows an announcement of name, specialisation, the degree held, and working hours, and nothing beyond that.⁴
• Confidentiality survives the work ending. Nothing learned about a patient through the profession may be divulged, even after the practitioner's capacity ceases and the working relationship ends. The exceptions are the patient's own consent, or that of their guardians, and testimony before a competent criminal court disclosing a felony or misdemeanour.⁴
• A licence can be withdrawn. It is withdrawn finally on a final criminal conviction for a felony, an attempted felony, or an infamous misdemeanour. It may also be suspended or withdrawn by reasoned decision of the Minister where the Ministry's Official Medical Committee reports that the practitioner's own state is incompatible with sound practice.⁵

One thing the law does not do is worth being straight about. Neither statute contains a clause of the form “no person may call themselves a psychologist”. What Lebanon prohibits is the practice without a licence, and it attaches a criminal penalty to that.³ The protection is real, and it is built that way rather than as a title clause. So the honest sentence is that the work is restricted, not that the word is.

How to check the person in front of you

There are two questions, because the law asks for two things.

Do you hold the Ministry of Public Health licence to practise, and under which category, clinical or educational? And is your name on the register of the Order of Psychologists?

Both registers are published. The Ministry publishes a list of psychologists licensed to practise in Lebanon.¹¹ The Order publishes a professional directory of its members, and separately a preliminary strike-off list.¹⁴ The ministry list carries its own last-updated date in the file, and at the time of writing that date was some years old, so treat an absence from it with more care than a presence on it.¹¹

The institution matters here too. The ministry has told healthcare and educational institutions to ensure that everyone working in clinical or educational psychology on their premises, or at any centre affiliated with them, holds the licence before any mental health service is provided.¹⁶ So it is fair to ask a clinic, a school or an organisation what it checked, and not only to ask the practitioner.

Asking is not an accusation, and the stakes behind the question are set by the law rather than by us. Practising as a clinical or educational psychologist without the Ministry licence carries imprisonment under Law 8/2017, and practising while banned carries a longer term.³ Breach of professional secrecy for private benefit carries imprisonment, a fine, and suspension of the licence for a year, even where the harm done is only moral.³

If you are already seeing someone

You may be reading this about a person you already see, and the work may be helping. Registration is a fact about where a practitioner stands in law. It is not a verdict on your therapy, and it is not a reason to feel foolish for not having asked sooner.

You have options rather than an obligation. You can put the two questions above directly and listen to how they are answered. You can take your time. Nothing here asks you to end a piece of work abruptly.

Where your concern is about safety rather than paperwork, do not wait on the paperwork question. Raise it with the practitioner, or with the institution that employs them, now.

What is still unsettled

A page that sounded certain about all of this would be misleading. These are the things we could not evidence from the governing texts, and we would rather name them than fill them in.

• Where a complaint goes. Law 254/2022 gives the Order the power to take disciplinary measures against members who breach professional duties and ethics, and the General Assembly elects a disciplinary council.⁸ How a member of the public starts that process, and how it is heard, sits in parts of the statute we have not been able to read. This page does not set out a complaints route, because we cannot source one.
• Foreign-qualified and non-Lebanese practitioners. The licence conditions open with a requirement to be Lebanese.² Whether either statute carries a reciprocity or foreign-practitioner provision, of the kind the medicine law has, we could not establish. Given how much mental health work in Lebanon runs through international organisations, this is a live question and it is open.
• Counsellors and psychoanalysts. We found no Lebanese instrument creating a licence, a register or an Order for either. The Order's own list of governing instruments does not carry one, and the Ministry's licensing matrix has no counselling category.⁹ The defensible statement is that the professions Lebanon licenses in this field are the clinical and the educational psychologist. We are not in a position to say more than that.
• Whether psychiatry is on the medical specialty schedule. The 1979 law recognises only specialties listed in a schedule annexed to it.¹⁵ We were not able to retrieve that schedule.
• How current the ministry register is. The published file's own name carries a 2022 date, and whether a newer list exists, or how it relates to the Order's directory, we do not know.¹¹
• Sub-specialisations. Law 254/2022 empowers the Order to issue regulations on the sub-specialisations branching from each category, with ministry ratification.⁸ Whether it has done so, and so what a Lebanese psychologist may legitimately advertise as a specialisation, we could not establish.

Finding a practitioner

TherapyRoute's directory lists practitioners with the qualifications and registrations stated on their profiles, including therapists in Lebanon. Our guide on how to find the right therapist sets out what to ask at a first contact. Whoever you consider, check the licence first.

Sources, and when this page was reviewed

The statements of law on this page are taken from Law No. 8 of 2017 and Law No. 254 of 2022 as published in the Lebanese Official Gazette, from the law regulating the practice of medicine of 1979, and from the Ministry of Public Health and the Order of Psychologists describing their own procedures. This page was reviewed in August 2026 against those texts.

Both psychology statutes are published as scanned images without a machine-readable text layer. The provisions above were read from the scans. Article numbers and the structure of the scheme are stated with confidence. Monetary penalties written into the 2017 text are deliberately not reproduced here, because a Lebanese pound figure fixed in 2017 would tell a reader in 2026 nothing useful about the seriousness of the offence.

Team TherapyRoute

References

1. [1] Law No. 8 of 10 February 2017, Organisation of the psychologist profession in Lebanon, Official Gazette No. 8, 16 February 2017, pp. 641–643 — Article 1 (definitions), including psychology as a science, the definition of the نفساني as a Master's-level practitioner providing non-pharmacological psychological treatment, and the two categories of clinical and educational psychologist. Published by the Order of Psychologists in Lebanon. lopsy.org.
2. [2] Law No. 8 of 10 February 2017 — Article 2 (the prohibition on practice without a licence issued by decision of the Minister of Public Health, and the permitted practice settings) and Articles 3 and 4 (the licence conditions for the clinical and the educational category, including Lebanese nationality, the Master's degree and its recognition or equivalence, the 100 supervised plus 300 practical training hours, and the colloquium pass), with Article 5 on the required documents. lopsy.org.
3. [3] Law No. 8 of 10 February 2017 — Articles 9 to 11 (penalties): imprisonment for practising as a clinical or educational psychologist without the Ministry licence, a longer term for practising while banned by administrative decision or judicial ruling, and imprisonment with a fine and a one-year suspension of the licence for breach of professional secrecy for private benefit. Monetary amounts in the 2017 text are not reproduced on this page. lopsy.org.
4. [4] Law No. 8 of 10 February 2017 — Article 7 (prohibition on misleading advertising and on the use of medical titles; the permitted announcement of name, specialisation, degree and working hours) and Article 8 (professional secrecy, its survival of the end of the working relationship, and its exceptions). lopsy.org.
5. [5] Law No. 8 of 10 February 2017 — Article 6 (final withdrawal of the licence on criminal conviction, and suspension or withdrawal by reasoned ministerial decision on a report of the Ministry's Official Medical Committee) and Article 12 (the one-year transitional window for practitioners with a Master's and five years of prior practice). lopsy.org.
6. [6] Law No. 254 of 5 January 2022, Establishing an Order of Psychologists in Lebanon, Official Gazette No. 2, 13 January 2022, pp. 134–142 — Article 1 (establishment of the Order, comprising all psychologists licensed by the Ministry of Public Health under Articles 3 and 4 of Law 8/2017) and Article 2 (definitions of the clinical psychologist, the psychotherapist as a licensed clinical psychologist additionally trained in recognised non-pharmacological psychotherapy techniques, and the educational psychologist). Published by the Order of Psychologists in Lebanon. lopsy.org.
7. [7] Law No. 254 of 5 January 2022 — Article 4 (no psychologist may practise anywhere in Lebanon unless registered with the Order and holding the Ministry licence; loss of registration on strike-off, suspension or final judgment; and the once-only eligibility examination for those with more than seven years of prior practice) and Article 5 (two-month decision, reasoned refusal, and appeal to the Beirut Civil Court of Appeal within fifteen days). lopsy.org.
8. [8] Law No. 254 of 5 January 2022 — Article 3 (functions of the Order, including participation with the Ministry in setting criteria for accredited training centres, issuing regulations on sub-specialisations, granting professional-practice attestations, taking disciplinary measures against members breaching professional duties and ethics, and setting a fee guide) and Articles 6 to 9 (legal personality and independence; the General Assembly, the Order Council and the Naqib; and the election of the standing committees and the disciplinary council). lopsy.org.
9. [9] Order of Psychologists in Lebanon, legal documents page — the Order's own list of the instruments governing the profession, carrying Law 8/2017, Law 254/2022, the code of professional ethics adopted in July 2023, and the internal bylaws adopted in October 2023. lopsy.org/legal-documents.
10. [10] Lebanese Republic, Ministry of Public Health — administrative service record for obtaining a licence to practise a medical or medical-auxiliary profession, form HEA001. The document matrix carries a column for the clinical and educational psychologist alongside general medicine, dentistry, midwifery, physiotherapy, nursing and dietetics. moph.gov.lb.
11. [11] Lebanese Republic, Ministry of Public Health — “List of psychologists with a license to practice in Lebanon”, and the register file itself, whose filename carries the date it was last updated. moph.gov.lb and the register PDF.
12. [12] Lebanese Republic, Ministry of Education and Higher Education — the colloquium examination service, the exam Law 8/2017 makes a condition of the licence. mehe.gov.lb.
13. [13] Order of Psychologists in Lebanon — “Become a licensed psychologist”: the five-step route to licensure, the evidence required for registration with the Order, the joining and annual fees and their 30 June due date, and the treatment of a licence as expired after two consecutive unpaid years. This page also states 400 hours of supervised training within the Master's programme, which differs in composition and timing from Articles 3 and 4 of Law 8/2017. lopsy.org.
14. [14] Order of Psychologists in Lebanon — the professional directory of members, and the lists page carrying accredited psychotherapy training centres, accredited university training centres, accredited supervisors, and a preliminary strike-off list. lopsy.org/members and lopsy.org/lists.
15. [15] Law regulating the practice of the medical profession in Lebanon, Decree No. 1658 of 17 January 1979, Official Gazette No. 10, 8 March 1979, Article 24 as amended by Law No. 204 of 2 March 1993, hosted by the Lebanese Order of Physicians in Beirut — Chapter 4, Article 11 (the Ministry of Public Health grants the licence to practise medicine); Chapter 2, Article 3 (conditions for a Lebanese physician, including the colloquium); and Chapter 6, Articles 13 to 20 (the protected title of specialist, recognition only of specialties listed in the annexed schedule, the Specialisation Committee, and the Minister's grant of the title). lopbeirut.org.
16. [16] Lebanese Republic, Ministry of Public Health — Circular No. 112, issued 27 November 2017, Related to limiting the practice of the profession of psychologist in healthcare and educational institutions exclusively to professionals who have the license to practice from the Ministry of Public Health, in the Ministry's own English translation. It urges institutions and authorities to ensure that all individuals working in clinical or educational psychology on their premises, at any affiliated centre, or on any activity or project they supervise, hold the Ministry licence, and to refrain from providing any service related to mental health before that; and it urges licence-holders to display the licence visibly in the workplace. moph.gov.lb.
17. [17] Lebanese Republic, Ministry of Public Health — Circular No. 113, issued 27 November 2017, Related to the mandatory licensing for the practice of the profession of Psychologist (clinical and educational), in the Ministry's own English. It states that Law 8/2017 requires all practising psychologists to obtain the Ministry licence and prohibits the provision of any service related to the practice of psychology without one, that non-compliance will result in prosecution as stipulated in the law, that licence-holders should display the licence visibly in the workplace, and that psychologists must abstain from prescribing medication, prescription being an exclusive right of physicians licensed by the Ministry and affiliated to the Order of Physicians in Lebanon. Hosted by the Ministry under the filename “Licensing of psychologists in Lebanon”. moph.gov.lb.