Mental Health Licensing & Regulation in Pakistan: 2025 Guide

Psychology and counselling in Pakistan are inside a statutory licensing scheme. Schedule-I of the Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 lists them as item 24.¹ The Act bars practice in a listed discipline unless the Council has licensed and registered you.² That is the short answer.

The route into practice runs in four steps. It runs from a recognised qualification to the Council's licensing exam, and then to a licence and entry on the register.³

There are two limits to note before you read on. This page covers psychology and counselling. Psychiatry is not one of the disciplines Schedule-I lists, and this page does not cover the law that governs doctors in Pakistan or how a psychiatrist is registered. One thing that follows from that, and matters if you are unwell enough to be considering medication: nothing in this scheme licenses anyone to prescribe it. Schedule-I lists allied health disciplines, and the practice of medicine is not among them.¹ If a psychologist or counsellor offers to prescribe, that is not something a registration under this Act covers. We could not confirm that the Council's register can be searched by the public. So the page says what the law requires, and marks plainly what is unconfirmed.

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What the law says now

The usual line on psychology in Pakistan is that there is no register, no licence and nobody to complain to. That fitted the position before 2022. It no longer does.

The Act carries the date 28 February 2022 on its face. It extends to the whole of Pakistan and, in its own words, comes into force at once.⁴ Its stated purpose is a uniform standard of qualification across allied health disciplines, and a consolidated law for registering the people who work in them.⁵

An Act in force is not the same as a council that is up and running. What we can and cannot confirm about that has its own section below.

How to qualify and get licensed

The Act describes an allied health professional as someone providing diagnostic, therapeutic, preventive, curative or rehabilitative care, who has completed a prescribed course of training at a recognised institution and is registered.⁴ The steps below follow that description.

1. Train at an institution the Council recognises. The Council recognises institutions and the qualifications they grant.⁶ It keeps a public register of them, with the date each recognition was given.⁶ Institutions already running when the Act commenced had one year to apply.⁶
2. What counts as a recognised qualification. A bachelor degree under the Act means a Council-recognised degree of at least four years after higher secondary school.⁴
3. Sit the licensing exam. Anyone holding a qualification the Council recognises has the right to take it.³ The Council must run an exam at least twice each year for every Schedule-I discipline, and the discipline's advisory committee writes it.³
4. Take up the licence and the register entry. Everyone who passes the licensing exam is granted a licence to practise and entered in the register of allied health professionals.³

The Act attaches privileges to that licence. You are entitled to practise in your discipline, subject to the code of conduct and terms of practice. You may hold a post in a public or private healthcare establishment. With a basic qualification and valid registration, you may apply for higher qualification courses.³

Standards of practice and a code of ethics are set for each discipline, and licensing exams are conducted as the Council directs.⁷ Advisory committees are created for the Schedule-I categories whose basic qualifying qualification is a recognised university degree.⁸ We could not find the criteria and syllabus set for psychology and counselling by the advisory committee, if one has been constituted for this discipline.

There was also a route for people already working when the Act commenced. Someone practising in a Schedule-I discipline could apply to the Council for recognition of their experience. If satisfied, the Council could let them sit the licensing exam. That opportunity was limited to applications made in the first year after commencement,³ so it is not open now.

Pakistan has few mental health specialists. One published paper puts the country at 0.19 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, with services running mainly through tertiary hospitals in the larger cities.⁹

If you trained outside Pakistan, or want to work abroad

The Act provides for qualifications earned elsewhere. The Council may recognise a foreign qualification, basic or higher, on the recommendation of the relevant advisory committee. Where you already hold a licence or registration from an allied health authority in a country the Council recognises, the Act says the Council shall register and license you.¹⁰ The Council may also negotiate reciprocity schemes with regulators in other countries, so that qualifications granted there can count here.

These are routes written into the law. Which countries and which qualifications the Council actually recognises is a separate question, and one this page cannot answer.

What a licence proves, and what it does not

Schedule-I carries one entry for psychology and counselling together, and the list has no separate entry for clinical psychology.¹ So a registration under it shows that someone met the Council's requirements for a broad discipline. It does not show which kind of clinical work they trained for. Ask separately about clinical training, and about who supervised it.

We have not been able to verify that the title clinical psychologist is protected in its own right. A registration can be suspended or withdrawn for violation of the Act, the rules and regulations made under it, or the terms and conditions of the registration.⁷

Is membership of the Pakistan Psychological Association a licence?

No. Membership of a professional association is voluntary, and the Act gives licensing and registration to the Council.³ An association did not grant a licence, so it cannot suspend one. If someone offers association membership when you ask about registration, they have answered a different question.

How to check the person in front of you

There is one question to ask, and you can ask it without accusing anyone.

Are you registered and licensed with the Allied Health Professionals Council, and under which Schedule-I discipline?

The question matters because a false answer is a criminal offence. Someone who is not registered, but says that they are, faces up to three years in prison or a fine up to one million rupees, or both. The same applies to using a title or letters that claim registration.²

Employers carry their own exposure. A healthcare establishment may not employ an unregistered allied health professional, and the fine for doing so starts at two million rupees and runs to five million.² So a clinic or a hospital has its own reason to check, and it is fair to ask what they checked.

There is a limit here, and it matters. The Act expressly requires a public register of the institutions and qualifications it recognises.⁶ Licensed practitioners are entered in the register of allied health professionals,³ but whether the public can search that register is something we have not been able to confirm. Ask the person, and ask the institution that employs them.

If you are already seeing someone

You may be reading this about someone you already see, and the work may be helping. Registration is a fact about a practitioner's standing in law. It is not a verdict on your therapy, and it is not a reason to feel foolish.

You have options rather than an obligation. You can put the registration question directly, and listen to how it is answered. You can ask what they are doing about registration, since the scheme is recent. 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, go to the complaint routes in the next section now rather than waiting.

If something goes wrong: where a complaint goes

The Council may hold an inquiry on a complaint, on information it receives, or on its own motion. It decides complaints about registered and licensed people and recognised institutions, and it can suspend or cancel a registration or licence and impose fines. The inquiry report goes to the practitioner first, so they can raise objections before the Council approves it.¹¹

Three limits apply before you start.

• Nothing anonymous. The Council will not entertain an anonymous or pseudonymous complaint against a practitioner or establishment registered under the Act.¹¹
• A complaint you know to be false has its own penalty. Where a complaint is determined to be false to the complainant's knowledge, it carries up to three months in prison, or a fine up to one million rupees, or both.² A complaint made in good faith that is simply not upheld is not what this provision reaches.
• The jurisdiction is written around registered people. Where someone never registered at all, the Council's complaint power is not the lever you have. The offence provisions above are the route instead.

After a Council finding, a claim for damages can be brought before the Pakistan Medical Tribunal, arising out of negligence, malpractice, maladministration or a failure in the provision of authorised healthcare services.¹¹

Appeals have fixed time limits. A decision by an officer of the Council can be appealed to the Council within thirty days, and it must be decided within ninety days. A decision of the Council can be appealed to the Pakistan Medical Tribunal within thirty days, and the Tribunal must decide within six months. No court other than that Tribunal takes jurisdiction under the Act.¹²

What is still unsettled

This is a scheme in transition, and a page that sounded certain would be a misleading one. This is what we cannot yet evidence.

• Whether the Council is constituted and operating, and whether its register of practitioners is open to the public. The Council's own disciplines and registration pages did not render when we tried to read them.
• What the Council prescribes as the qualification for psychology and counselling, and what its licensing exam covers.
• A 30 June 2026 date circulates in reporting as the point at which registration becomes mandatory. Enforcement after that date is an open question, and none of the statutory text we could find sets that date.
• How the federal scheme sits with provincial regulation. Sindh appears in reporting. Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan we cannot speak to.
• The law governing doctors, and so psychiatrists. We could not source the regulator that registers them, so this page gives no medical verification route.
• Whether a psychology-specific Council Act ever reached the statute book. We found no evidence that one did. The 2022 Act is the scheme this page sets out.

Finding a practitioner

TherapyRoute's directory lists practitioners with the qualifications and registrations stated on their profiles. Our guide on how to find the right therapist sets out what to ask at a first contact.

Sources, and when this page was reviewed

Section references are to the Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022, as published by the Government of Pakistan. This page was reviewed in August 2026 against that text.

Team TherapyRoute

References

1. [1] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — Schedule-I, the Act’s list of allied health disciplines (item 24 is “Psychology and counseling”), with s.41 (Overriding effect). pakistancode.gov.pk.
2. [2] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — the bar on practising a listed discipline without a Council licence and registration, and s.25 (Penalty for offences) including s.25(2) on health-care establishments and s.25(3) on a complaint false to the complainant’s knowledge. pakistancode.gov.pk.
3. [3] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — s.17 (Licensing and Rights of Licensees) and the transitional route by which a person already practising may apply to the Council for recognition within one year of commencement. pakistancode.gov.pk.
4. [4] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — s.1 (Short title, extent, commencement) and s.2 (Definitions). pakistancode.gov.pk.
5. [5] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — long title, arrangement of sections, and the establishment of the Council. pakistancode.gov.pk.
6. [6] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — recognition of institutions imparting basic or higher qualifications and the public register of recognitions, with s.13 (Recognition of foreign qualifications). pakistancode.gov.pk.
7. [7] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — the powers and functions of the Council — curricula and training standards, recognition of qualifications granted in Pakistan and abroad, inspection fees — with s.11 (Officers and servants of the Council). pakistancode.gov.pk.
8. [8] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — the composition of the Council — provincial, Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK nominations from the Schedule-I categories — and s.4 (Powers and functions of the Council), including the advisory committees and their chairmen as co-opted members. pakistancode.gov.pk.
9. [9] Main Thompson A, Saleem SM. Closing the mental health gap: transforming Pakistan's mental health landscape. Frontiers in Health Services. 2025;4:1471528. doi:10.3389/frhs.2024.1471528 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11835998.
10. [10] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — s.15 (Reciprocal recognition of qualification). pakistancode.gov.pk.
11. [11] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — s.29 (Procedure of inquiry) and the Council’s enforcement powers, including exclusive trial of cognizable offences by the Pakistan Medical Tribunal and claims for damages before that Tribunal. pakistancode.gov.pk.
12. [12] The Allied Health Professionals Council Act, 2022 (Act No. IX of 2022) — s.25(3)–(4) on a knowingly false complaint and obstruction of an inquiry, s.26 (Appeal) with its thirty-day and ninety-day limits and appeal to the Pakistan Medical Tribunal, s.27 (Cognizance by court) and s.28 (Complaints). pakistancode.gov.pk.