Find Couples Psychotherapists in Sydney, Australia

Couples counselling works with two people, and with what happens between them. It does not treat one of them.

Both partners usually attend ¹. Couples counselling works on repeated arguments, an affair, sex, money, parenting, or a decision about separating.

It does not rule on who is right. It is not for married couples alone. Ask a practitioner which approach they use.

Everyone on this page describes their work as psychotherapy. A psychotherapist works through talking with you about your thoughts, feelings and behaviours ².

Psychotherapy usually runs longer than counselling and aims for clinical change. It works on patterns that repeat rather than on one current problem.

A psychotherapist trains in psychological treatment rather than in medicine. What that training covers, and which approach a practitioner uses, differ between practitioners. Ask which approach a psychotherapist trained in, and how long they usually work.

Sydney Local Health District Community Mental Health Service. Phone 1800 011 511. NSW public hospital and community mental-health services are free. The service is open to the public. You reach it through the NSW Mental Health Line, which assesses you clinically and refers you on. Local catchment areas apply.

Usually. Partners are almost always seen together¹.

Some practitioners will see one partner alone where the other will not attend. A practitioner should still see you if you have no partner or cannot bring them³. Ask what a practitioner does when one person is unwilling.

No. Couples counselling is for people in a relationship, married or not, of any gender, living together or not. The same practitioners work with couples deciding whether to separate, and with couples who have already separated and are parenting together. Say which of those describes you at first contact.

No. The work is with what happens between two people rather than with a verdict on either of them. Effective work with couples needs its own theories and methods, drawn from research on relationships. Ask a practitioner how they handle it when you disagree in the room.

Yes, and many practitioners offer it. Couples therapy by video shows few significant differences from face-to-face sessions⁴. Symptom reduction, engagement and the therapeutic alliance are comparable.

Sitting in the same room at home suits some couples and not others. Ask what a practitioner offers.

Each practitioner sets their own fee; no published tariff applies.

Four things move a fee. The practitioner's registration category, their experience, the session length, and whether you meet in a room or online.

TherapyRoute publishes a cost guide for Melbourne⁵ and one for Sydney⁶. Both are written for therapy in that city rather than for couples work. We have not checked either guide against what the practitioners on this page charge.

Lower-fee couples services exist. Relationship Matters Counselling and Mediation, in Melbourne, sees couples in the room or online, at fees scaled to income⁷. It is the only Australian couples service whose fee our own record verifies. In another city, ask a community service what it charges.

Where a practitioner states a fee on their listing, that figure is their own. Ask before the first session. Ask too whether the fee runs per session or per person in the room.

Couple therapy is an effective treatment for relationship distress, and the main models reach broadly similar results⁸.

Behavioural, cognitive-behavioural, emotionally focused and integrative behavioural couple therapy meet the criteria researchers use for a well-established treatment⁹.

Those findings describe groups of couples in studies. They are not a forecast about any one relationship, and nobody listed here can promise you an outcome.

Ask a practitioner which of those approaches they work in. The approach is something you ask about.

Both partners usually attend together.

Practice differs on what comes first. Some approaches open with a formal assessment that combines joint and individual meetings. Others use no set assessment stage¹.

The Australian Psychological Society's code of ethics sets a standard for work with more than one client¹⁰. The practitioner explains the limits of confidentiality to each person in advance. The practitioner gives each person the chance to consider them, and asks each to accept them.

Ask before you start whether the practitioner sees each partner alone. Ask what they do with what one partner tells them privately.

There is no threshold you have to cross first. Relationship distress is one of the commonest reasons adults seek psychotherapy at all⁸.

Distress between partners travels. It is associated with mood, anxiety and substance-use difficulties in the partners themselves, and with difficulties for children in the household¹.

Couples counselling works on a repeating argument, an affair, a separation or a divorce, or none of those. You do not have to agree on the problem, or on whether the relationship continues, before you make contact.

Our records name no register for the title psychotherapist in Australia. See the Australia page for the professions that do carry a register there.