If you or your children are not safe, get help now. Visit a nearby emergency service, hospital, or police station immediately. The line listed below is a gender-based-violence line.
Crisis numbers in the United States of America
- National Domestic Violence Hotline, funded under the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act: Tel: 1-800-799-7233
This page lists Couples Social Workers in San Diego. 4 in all.
What the social workers on this page do, and how to choose one
For a couple, the social workers listed in San Diego work with the person and their situation. That can mean regular sessions, help with services, or work with the family 1.
Where an assessment, a diagnosis or medicine is needed, ask who provides it where you are. Open the profiles below to compare experience, language, fee, and whether they work online. Ask how soon each one can see you.
What social work covers, from counselling to housing and income
Everyone on this page is listed under the professional title social worker. Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline 2. It promotes social change, cohesion and the empowerment of people.
The training emphasises the systems around a person. Housing, income, schooling, child protection and family conflict are part of it.
In mental health that often means talking work alongside practical support. Ask a practitioner what parts of your situation they would work on.
What this page filters on
These are the only filters: the specialism recorded as Couples and the professional title social worker.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do both of us have to come?
Usually. Partners are almost always seen together3. Couples sessions require safety.
Some practitioners will see one partner alone where the other will not attend. Ask what a practitioner does when one person is unwilling.
Is this for married couples only?
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.
Will the therapist say who is right?
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.
Can couples counselling be done online?
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.
What does couples therapy cost in the United States?
Each practitioner sets their own fee. Our guide to what therapy costs in the United States sets out the usual ranges; ask each practitioner what a couples session costs.
Each state licenses practitioners and sets what they may do5. The titles whose fees you compare change at a state line.
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.
Does couples therapy work?
Couple therapy is an effective treatment for relationship distress, and the main models reach broadly similar results6.
Behavioural, cognitive-behavioural, emotionally focused and integrative behavioural couple therapy meet the criteria researchers use for a well-established treatment7.
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.
A state board licenses marriage and family therapy and the titles that go with it8. No register records the approach a practitioner works in9. The approach is a question for the practitioner. Ask a practitioner how they work with two people, and what they do when the two of you want different things.
What happens in a couples therapy session?
Both partners usually attend together. The practitioner works with what happens between you, not with one person's account of it.
Practice differs on what comes first. Some approaches open with a formal assessment that combines joint and individual meetings. Others use no set assessment stage3.
Most practitioners seeing couples here cannot prescribe medication. Psychiatrists, other doctors and nurse practitioners can prescribe. A few states also let psychologists with extra training prescribe.
Before you start, ask the practitioner these questions.
- Does the practitioner see each partner alone?
- What does the practitioner do with what one partner tells them in private?
- How will you know the work has finished?
Will insurance pay for couples therapy?
Medicare Part B covers family counseling when its main purpose is to help with your treatment10. Medicare names marriage and family therapists among the providers it pays.
Other plans write their own rules, so ask yours whether it pays for a session with two people.
When should we go for couples therapy?
There is no threshold you have to cross first. Relationship distress is one of the commonest reasons adults seek psychotherapy at all6.
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 household3.
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.
If safety is the problem at home, the routes are your state, territory or tribal coalition11, and the courts12.
Who registers therapists in the United States?
The title you will see is Licensed Clinical Social Worker.
A practitioner must hold a current licence from the state board where they practise.
What these practitioners record
3 of the 4 have included their registration on their profile.
Nearby places and related listings
- Couples Family Therapists in San Diego
- Anxiety Social Workers in San Diego
- Depression Social Workers in San Diego
- Trauma Social Workers in San Diego
- Female Family Therapists in San Diego, one filter on the full San Diego family therapists list
- Psychologists in San Diego
- Family Therapists in San Diego
- Every therapist listed in San Diego (38)
- Couples therapy, San Diego
References
[1] MSD Manual, Consumer Version. Treatment of mental illness (Overview of mental health care).
[2] International Federation of Social Workers. Global definition of the social work profession.
[9] TherapyRoute's own records.
[10] Medicare.gov, Mental health care (outpatient).
[11] Office on Violence Against Women, Resources for Victims and Survivors, US Department of Justice.
[12] 18 U.S.C. § 2265, full faith and credit given to protection orders. US Government Publishing Office.
Real choice. Authentic, independent, clinician-led care.
TherapyRoute is a clinician-led directory that champions independent practitioners who answer to you and their professional ethics. We don't take commissions, sell your data, or assign therapists by algorithm. You browse, compare, and choose.
Vincenzo (Enzo) Sinisi, Clinical Psychologist (HPCSA), Psychoanalyst (IPA/SAPA), Group Analyst (IGA)
