The most reliable way to find out if a therapist has complaints against them is to search your state’s licensing board website, where finalized disciplinary actions are public record. Every state maintains a database where you can look up a therapist by name and see whether their license is active, expired, or has been subject to any formal discipline. The catch: only complaints that resulted in official action will show up. Pending investigations and dismissed complaints are kept confidential in nearly every state.
Start With Your State Licensing Board
Each state has one or more boards that oversee therapists, and the specific board depends on the type of license. Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, and Psychologists are often regulated by different boards within the same state. In New York, for example, the State Education Department’s Office of the Professions handles mental health counselor licensing and offers an online search tool for both license verification and enforcement actions. In Ohio, a combined Counselor, Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist Board handles multiple license types under one roof.
To find the right board, search for your state’s name plus the therapist’s license type and the words “license verification.” Most boards let you search by the therapist’s last name. The results typically show the license status (active, inactive, expired, or revoked) and any public disciplinary actions. If your therapist holds a psychology license rather than a counseling or social work license, you’ll need to check your state’s psychology board instead, which is usually a separate entity.
The Association of Social Work Boards maintains a directory of links to every state’s social work regulatory board website, which can save you time if you’re checking on a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Some states bundle all professional license searches into a single portal, while others have separate systems for each profession.
What Disciplinary Terms Actually Mean
When you pull up a therapist’s record and see a disciplinary action, the terminology can be confusing. Here’s what the most common terms mean in practice:
- Reprimand: A formal statement that the therapist did something wrong, made public for consumer protection. The therapist doesn’t have to complete any additional requirements and can continue practicing. Think of it as an official warning on their permanent record.
- Probation: The therapist can still practice, but under specific conditions set by the board, such as supervision, additional training, or regular check-ins for a defined period.
- Suspension: The therapist is temporarily prohibited from practicing. Some suspensions are “stayed,” meaning the suspension is paused as long as the therapist meets certain conditions. If they violate those conditions, the suspension takes full effect.
- Surrender: The therapist’s license has been terminated. They either must meet very specific conditions to apply for a new license in the future or are permanently barred from applying again. This is one of the most serious outcomes.
- Revocation: The board has forcibly removed the license. Like surrender, this ends the therapist’s ability to practice.
A reprimand is the mildest formal action, while surrender and revocation are the most severe. If you see a reprimand from years ago with no further issues, it tells a different story than an active probation or a recent suspension.
What You Won’t Find in Public Records
State boards treat complaint investigations as confidential. If someone has filed a complaint against your therapist and the board is still looking into it, that information won’t appear anywhere you can search. If the board investigates and decides no action is warranted, the complaint never becomes public at all. Only when an investigation concludes with a decision for disciplinary action does the therapist’s name become part of the public record.
This means a therapist could have multiple complaints filed against them that were either dismissed or are still under review, and you’d have no way of knowing. It’s a limitation worth understanding: a clean licensing board record means no finalized disciplinary actions, not necessarily zero complaints.
There’s also a federal database called the National Practitioner Data Bank that tracks malpractice payments and disciplinary actions across states. Unfortunately, federal law restricts access to registered entities like hospitals and licensing boards. The general public cannot search it. The only exception is narrow: a plaintiff’s attorney can request information about a specific practitioner if a malpractice suit has already been filed against a hospital, the practitioner is named in the claim, and there’s evidence the hospital failed to check the database. For someone simply vetting a therapist before starting treatment, the NPDB is off-limits.
Checking Court Records for Lawsuits
Disciplinary actions and malpractice lawsuits are two separate tracks. A client might sue a therapist in civil court without ever filing a board complaint, or vice versa. If you want to check whether a therapist has been involved in civil litigation, you have a couple of options.
Most state and county courts have online case search portals where you can look up a person’s name and see if they’ve been a party in any lawsuits. The amount of detail available varies widely by jurisdiction. Some show full case documents, others just a case number and filing date. For federal cases, the U.S. Courts system offers an electronic records service, though accessing detailed filings typically requires creating an account and paying small per-page fees.
Keep in mind that finding a lawsuit doesn’t automatically mean the therapist did something wrong. Cases get settled, dismissed, or decided in the therapist’s favor. A lawsuit’s existence is a data point, not a verdict on its own.
What Review Sites Can and Can’t Tell You
Sites like Healthgrades, Psychology Today, Vitals, and Google Reviews are where many people first encounter feedback about therapists. These platforms can surface patterns worth paying attention to, but they have real limitations as a source for verifying complaints.
Healthgrades, for instance, states that all reviews are confirmed and audited before publication, that doctors cannot pay for good reviews or pay to remove negative ones, and that reviews mentioning legal matters are not allowed. Community members can flag inappropriate content. These safeguards filter out the most obvious abuse, but reviews still represent the subjective experience of individual clients. A string of reviews mentioning boundary issues or unprofessional behavior is worth taking seriously, but a single negative review among many positive ones may reflect a poor therapeutic fit rather than misconduct.
None of these sites pull from licensing board data or court records. They’re consumer opinion platforms, not official complaint databases. Use them as one piece of the picture alongside your licensing board search.
A Practical Approach to Vetting a Therapist
If you want to be thorough, work through these steps in order. First, identify the therapist’s exact license type and license number (this is usually on their website or Psychology Today profile). Second, go to your state’s licensing board website and search for their record. Look for active license status and any disciplinary history. Third, run their name through your county or state court’s online case search to check for civil lawsuits. Fourth, scan review sites for patterns in client feedback, giving more weight to repeated themes than to any single review.
If a therapist practices across state lines, which is increasingly common with telehealth, check the licensing board in every state where they hold a license. Disciplinary action in one state doesn’t always automatically transfer to another, so a therapist disciplined in one state could theoretically have a clean record in a neighboring state’s database.
You can also simply ask the therapist directly. Ethical practitioners are generally transparent about their license status and will provide their license number if you ask. Reluctance to share basic credentialing information is itself useful information.