Mental Health Licensing & Regulation in Russia: 2026 Guide

In Russia the medical licence belongs to the practice, whether that is a company or a registered sole practitioner, not to the practitioner as a named professional. Under Федеральный закон от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ, a медицинская организация (medical organisation) is a юридическое лицо (legal entity) whose main registered activity is medical activity carried on under a licence.¹ That one structural fact decides what a member of the public can usefully check.

TherapyRoute lists therapists in countries around the world. In many of them you can look a practitioner up by name on a national register. Russia works differently. The public register holds licensed organisations, searched by company name or tax number. It will not return a named psychologist.

For psychological work delivered outside medical care, none of the statutes we hold creates a state licence. This page does not invent one. What follows separates what the statutes say from the questions we could not answer from them. The second list is set out in full under what we could not verify.

---

If you need support rather than the rules

If you need help rather than the regulations, the distinction still matters. It decides what protection you have. Care delivered as medical care sits inside the licensing rules and the patient rights set out below. A conversation with a psychologist working outside medical care may sit outside both.

The TherapyRoute directory for Russia lists practitioners you can filter by language and by fee. Our guide on how to find the right therapist sets out what to ask at first contact. For urgent help inside Russia, see our list of suicide hotlines and crisis lines in Russia.

What Russian law actually licenses

Two federal laws set out most of the framework. Федеральный закон от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ is cited here in its 04.08.2026 redaction. The same law defines медицинская помощь (medical care) as measures to maintain or restore health that include providing медицинских услуг (medical services).¹ Work that fits that description is medical activity. Medical activity is licensed.

The licensing itself runs through a general statute, and that statute states its own purpose. Федеральный закон от 04.05.2011 N 99-ФЗ says лицензирование отдельных видов деятельности (the licensing of particular activities) exists to prevent harm to the rights, legitimate interests, life or health of citizens. The same article names the environment, cultural heritage, and the defence and security of the state, and bars licensing for any other purpose.²

Who holds the licence is the part that matters for checking. Under Федеральный закон от 04.05.2011 N 99-ФЗ, the licence holder is a юридическое лицо или индивидуальный предприниматель (a legal entity or an individual entrepreneur), and the licence runs indefinitely. A licence counts as предоставлена (granted) only once the entry appears in the реестр лицензий (licence register), under Федеральный закон от 04.05.2011 N 99-ФЗ.² Sole practitioners are not outside this: Федеральный закон от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ also treats individual entrepreneurs who carry out медицинскую деятельность (medical activity) as medical organisations.¹

Two further features make the licence checkable. Under Федеральный закон от 04.05.2011 N 99-ФЗ, лицензионные требования (licence requirements) are the binding requirements set by the regulation covering each licensed activity. The same law ties a licence to a место осуществления лицензируемого вида деятельности (the place where the licensed activity is carried out), identified by a postal address.² So a licence records both who holds it and where the activity is carried out.

Статья 10 of Федеральный закон от 04.05.2011 N 99-ФЗ charges a государственная пошлина (state duty) for granting a licence, and bars licensing bodies from charging applicants or licence holders for a register extract.² A КонсультантПлюс note on the same article records that the state duty is not payable on applications filed between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2029, with named exceptions, under Постановление Правительства РФ от 12.03.2022 N 353.

Who supervises, and what you can look up

The federal health supervision service is the body a member of the public can actually reach. The licence services described here are published by Федеральная служба по надзору в сфере здравоохранения (Roszdravnadzor) and were checked on 9 August 2026.³ Its published service list sets out what it does.

Roszdravnadzor lists Лицензирование медицинской деятельности (licensing of medical activity) among its services, together with Установление соответствия иностранного образования (establishing the conformity of foreign education) for medical and pharmaceutical workers. Supervision sits with the same body: Roszdravnadzor also carries федеральный государственный контроль (надзор) качества и безопасности медицинской деятельности, the state supervision of the quality and safety of medical activity. One document belongs to the individual rather than the organisation. Roszdravnadzor's service list includes Выдача сертификата специалиста (issue of a specialist certificate).³

The register is searchable, and its search fields set out what can be looked up. Roszdravnadzor's Поиск лицензий в Едином реестре лицензий (licence search in the unified licence register) takes an organisation's name, ИНН or ОГРН, with медицинская деятельность selectable as the activity. Results from the Единый реестр лицензий can be exported to an Excel file.³ Every one of those fields identifies a business. None of them takes a surname.

Checking one practitioner before you book

1. Ask which organisation you will be seen by, and get its full name plus its ИНН or ОГРН. A practitioner working as an individual entrepreneur has these too.
2. Search that name or number in the Единый реестр лицензий and choose медицинская деятельность as the activity. An entry shows the licence, the activity it covers and the address. Check the status on the entry too, because a licence can be suspended or terminated.
3. If the work on offer is not medical care, expect no entry at all. That is the normal position, not a finding against the person.
4. Ask the practitioner for their qualification documents, and for a medical practitioner the document that shows their specialism.
5. Ask two questions: which organisation holds the licence you work under, and which document shows your specialism. Neither is unreasonable. A refusal to answer either is a reason to look elsewhere.

What a gap means depends on which half of the system you are in.

• No register entry for a psychologist offering talking therapy outside medical care is expected. It tells you nothing about the person.
• No register entry for a clinic offering diagnosis, medication or inpatient care is a hard warning sign. Medical activity without a licensed entity behind it is the thing the licensing law exists to stop.
• An unwillingness to name the organisation, or to show any qualification document, is a warning sign in either half.
• A promise of a specific outcome is a warning sign in any country, whatever the paperwork says.

Psychiatrist, psychologist, and the titles you bring with you

Titles do not carry the same weight everywhere. The American Psychiatric Association describes a psychiatrist as a medical doctor with special training in psychiatry, able to conduct psychotherapy and prescribe medications.⁴ That is a description of the American position, and a reasonable starting point rather than a statement of what the title carries in every country.

Inside Russia the statutes we hold do not settle every boundary. We could not retrieve the ministerial nomenclature of medical specialties. So this page does not list which Russian specialties may prescribe, and does not describe what the titles medical psychologist and psychotherapist carry in Russian practice. Treating that gap as though it were an answer is how a page becomes confidently wrong.

For the title psychologist, what we can state is narrow. The statutes we hold license medical activity, and none of them creates a register of individual psychologists. Whether a separate state licence exists for psychological help delivered outside medical care is a question we could not settle from our sources, and it is listed below rather than guessed at.

What the 1992 psychiatric care law gives a patient

Psychiatric care has its own statute, Закон РФ от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1, carried here in its 22.07.2024 redaction.⁵ It is the law that decides consent. If you have a first psychiatric appointment coming, it is worth reading beforehand rather than afterwards.

Under Закон РФ от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1, лечение без согласия (treatment without consent) is allowed only for compulsory medical measures or involuntary hospitalisation, and outside urgent cases is decided by a psychiatrists' commission. Закон РФ от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1 points to its статья 29 for the grounds on which hospitalisation without consent (без согласия) may happen.⁵ That treatment decision is a commission's, not one doctor's, except in urgent cases. We do not hold the provisions setting out how an involuntary hospitalisation itself is authorised.

The statute also sets out rights. Under Закон РФ от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1, a person's rights and freedoms cannot be restricted on the basis of a psychiatric diagnosis alone. One right is worth using. Закон РФ от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1 gives a patient the right to ask any specialist involved in providing psychiatric care to join the врачебная комиссия (doctors' commission), if that specialist agrees.⁵

Treatment itself is bounded. Закон РФ от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1 requires that методы диагностики и лечения (methods of diagnosis and treatment) be used only for diagnosis and treatment, never as punishment or in another person's interests.⁵ A person living with a mental disorder can hold a clinician to it.

The law also covers fitness for work. Under Закон РФ от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1, a commission of psychiatrists can find a citizen непригодным (unfit) for certain kinds of work на срок не более пяти лет (for up to five years). The commission decides on the results of a mandatory psychiatric examination.⁵ The finding is time-limited by design. The law allows a repeat examination once the period ends, or once the person's condition improves.

Online and remote sessions

Remote work has a legal definition in Russia, and it is a medical one. Федеральный закон от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ defines телемедицинские технологии (telemedicine technologies) as technologies for remote interaction between medical workers, and with patients or their legal representatives. The access provisions of Федеральный закон от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ gained применением телемедицинских технологий (use of telemedicine technologies) through Федеральным законом от 29.07.2017 N 242-ФЗ.¹

The limits of that definition matter. It is built around medical workers and patients. A psychological conversation that is not medical care does not obviously sit inside it. We could not source a provision that settles the point either way. If you are practising, that is a question for a Russian lawyer rather than for a guide.

The framework can also be varied for trials. Under Федеральный закон от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ, an experimental legal regime may set special rules for услуги, оказываемые с применением телемедицинских технологий (services provided using telemedicine technologies).¹ So the position a reader checks today may not be the position in two years.

If something goes wrong

Where the service was medical care, the route is the supervision function named above: the state supervision of the quality and safety of medical activity sits with Roszdravnadzor, alongside the licensing it also runs. A complaint about a clinic starts with the organisation that holds the licence. The register entry identifies it. We could not source Roszdravnadzor's complaints procedure or its contact channels, so this page does not set out how to complain to it, or what it can and cannot act on.

Responsibility is stated in the health statute itself. Статья 9 of Федеральный закон от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ makes state and local authorities and officials ответственность (responsible), within their powers, for the health-protection guarantees the law sets.¹

Where the service was not medical care, we could not source the consumer-protection route or its statutory basis, so this page names neither. That is a gap in what we hold, not a statement that no route exists.

What we could not verify

This page does not project completeness. The items below were sought and not obtained, and each is a question this page therefore leaves open.

• The draft law on psychological assistance. We could not retrieve the State Duma record, so this page states no reading stage, no date and no content for it. It is the single item most worth watching if you are tracking change.
• Whether any statute creates or excludes a state licence for psychological help delivered outside medical activity. We can say what is licensed. We cannot state the negative as sourced law.
• The ministerial nomenclature of medical specialties, and with it which specialties may prescribe, and what medical psychologist and psychotherapist mean as Russian job titles.
• The Ministry of Labour professional standards, including any standard covering educational psychologists, with title, order number and date.
• The federal state educational standards for psychology and clinical psychology degrees, with their specialisation codes, levels and durations.
• The Russian Psychological Society's certification and attestation scheme, its ethics complaint route, and its membership figures. Membership, regional branch and university counts previously carried on this page have been removed because no source we hold supports them.
• Whether a Russian national awarding committee for EuroPsy is currently active, and whether the EuroPsy register still returns holders in Russia. This page previously asserted the arrangement as current. We could not confirm it, so the claim is gone rather than restated.
• The federal register of education documents, and whether a member of the public can query it to confirm a claimed degree.
• The consumer-protection complaint route for a service that was not medical care.
• Government programmes and national initiatives on mental health. We could not source any, so this page describes none.
• Russia's service and workforce picture. The World Health Organization's Mental Health Atlas 2024, the seventh edition since 2001, draws on data from 144 countries and carries country profiles.⁷ WHO's Mental Health Atlas is released every three years and compiles data provided by countries on mental health policies, legislation, financing and services.⁸ We do not hold the Russian profile, so we publish no figures from it.

Russian federal law is amended often. The redaction dates given above are the ones we read, and a later redaction can change the position.

This page is for general understanding and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are struggling, please speak to a qualified mental health professional. TherapyRoute cannot offer real-time or emergency support.

Written and reviewed by Team TherapyRoute. Last checked 9 August 2026.

References

1. [1] Федеральный закон "Об основах охраны здоровья граждан в Российской Федерации" от 21.11.2011 N 323-ФЗ (последняя редакция) consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_121895.
2. [2] Федеральный закон "О лицензировании отдельных видов деятельности" от 04.05.2011 N 99-ФЗ (последняя редакция) consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_113658.
3. [3] Федеральная служба по надзору в сфере здравоохранения - лицензии roszdravnadzor.gov.ru/services/licenses.
4. [4] What is Psychiatry? — American Psychiatric Association psychiatry.org.
5. [5] Закон РФ "О психиатрической помощи и гарантиях прав граждан при ее оказании" от 02.07.1992 N 3185-1 (последняя редакция) consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_4205.
6. [6] COVID-19 disrupting mental health services in most countries, WHO survey — World Health Organization who.int.
7. [7] Mental Health Atlas — World Health Organization who.int.
8. [8] Mental Health ATLAS 2020 — World Health Organization who.int/publications/i/item/9789240036703.