Marriage Counsellors & Couples Therapists in Lebanon

Both partners attend, and any separate contact with one partner should follow rules agreed in advance ¹. Ask what they are.

Sessions are commonly about an hour and often weekly, with many approaches expecting a course of work over months. The early sessions cover history as much as the present difficulty.

Sessions online are widely offered here, including for couples living apart from each other, or from the country. Different models produce similar results for relationship distress ², so choose on fit and on what you can attend.

Psychology here is licensed. The Ministry of Public Health issues the licence to practise and publishes the list of licensed clinical psychologists ³. Practising psychologists register with the Lebanese Order of Psychologists, the professional body set up by Law 254/2022 ⁴.

A practitioner may hold a qualification and a membership rather than a state licence. That is not irregular, and the two are not the same thing.

Ask which licence or registration a practitioner holds, and check the ministry's published list where it applies.

Titles you will see include Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Psychologist and Clinical Psychologist. Search the registers by name at Ministry of Public Health, Lebanon (MOPH) or Lebanese Order of Psychologists (LOPsy). Check that the name and title match and that the entry is current. If they do not, ask the practitioner why.

Practitioners set their own fees.

Our guide to what therapy costs in Lebanon sets out what people are quoted and what changes it ⁵. Read it first. Then ask the practitioner what a session for two people costs and how long it runs. Ask in which currency they charge.

Sessions online may be priced differently from sessions in a consulting room.

A joint appointment is not always where to begin.

Moderate to severe aggression between partners is one reason ¹. Active alcohol or other substance misuse is another. So are a continuing affair and psychotic symptoms.

Individual or specialist help usually comes first.

Couples sessions require safety. If one partner is afraid of the other, the services below are the ones for that. Seeing someone alone first is a normal route into couples work rather than a decision about the relationship.

Our own listings are concentrated in Beirut and the surrounding towns, and between them the practitioners record Arabic, English and French ⁶. Which language a couple wants to argue and repair in is a real choice here, and it is on every listing.

If one of you is abroad, say so in your first message.

Practitioners who work online say so on their listing.

Psychotherapy delivered live by video reaches outcomes close to in-person work, across therapies in general rather than couples work⁷. Couples work by video shows few significant differences from meeting in a room, and the therapeutic alliance is comparable⁸.

Say in your first message that one of you is abroad, and name the time zone.

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 results².

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.

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.

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 stage¹.

In the first meeting you usually talk about why you are coming now, how each of you sees the problem, and what each of you wants changed.

Before you start, ask the practitioner these questions.

• Does the practitioner see each partner alone?
• How will you know the work has finished?

Employer and private policies set their own outpatient benefits, and counselling is often outside them.

Ask your insurer whether it covers outpatient consultations with your practitioner's category, and ask the practitioner what they can invoice.

There is no threshold you have to cross first.

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 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.

Where there is violence at home, these are the services, and they are separate from couples work.

KAFA runs a support line for women and children affected by violence, at all hours and free of charge ¹⁰. It offers safety planning, social work, psychological assessment, legal consultation and referral to a safe shelter. It is open regardless of nationality or religious community.

ABAAD runs an emergency line, and free safe shelters for women and girls ¹¹. The Internal Security Forces have their own line for domestic violence complaints, allocated under Law 293 of 2014.

In Lebanon, marriage, separation and custody are dealt with under the personal status laws of the recognised religious communities ¹². The position depends on your own community's law. A general answer will not help you.

ABAAD also runs a centre for men that offers individual, family and couples counselling alongside work on anger and stress ¹³.