Find Couples Family Therapists in London, the United Kingdom

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 family or systemic therapy. Family therapy helps people in close relationships understand and support each other ².

Family here means whoever those involved count as family. Sessions usually have more than one person in the room.

A therapist may also meet members on their own ³. Ask a practitioner who they would want in the room.

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust Lambeth Talking Therapies. Phone +44 20 3228 6747. Talking Therapies care is free under the NHS. Adults aged 18 and older can refer themselves. You must live in Lambeth or have a Lambeth GP.

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 them⁴. 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 sessions⁵. 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. We will not print a range nobody has measured for couples work.

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

Some counselling is free. The NHS names treatment at another NHS service, an employer, a school or university, and a charity as the routes⁶.

In England, couple therapy for depression is one of the talking therapies NHS services deliver. Those services are free to patients, and a couple can refer themselves⁷. The NHS offers counselling for certain conditions rather than for relationship difficulty in general.

Where a practitioner states a fee on their listing, that figure is their own. Ask before the first session, and ask whether the fee is charged 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.

In England the NHS commissions couple therapy for depression, on the strength of a NICE recommendation⁷.

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.

What the research does not settle is which approach suits you. Ask a practitioner how they work with two people, and what they do when the two of you want different things.

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.

Which route you take changes what you meet. Through an NHS talking therapies service in England the therapy comes from a set list, couple therapy for depression among it⁷. A practitioner you approach privately sets the shape of the work themselves.

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

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.

Nobody has to send you. You can refer yourself to an NHS talking therapies service without speaking to a GP, and a practitioner you pay privately needs no referral either⁶.

Couples come with a repeating argument, with an affair, with a decision about whether to stay together, and with none of those. You do not have to agree on the problem before you make contact.

Our records name no register for the title family therapist in the United Kingdom. See the United Kingdom page for the professions that do carry a register there.