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Finding a referral to a Christian therapist

While BACIP does not offer a referral service, we have been frequently approached for help in finding referrals to Christian psychologists or counsellors, so have put together a list of suggestions for help in this area. If you have any further suggestions please let us know.

The Association of Christian Counsellors runs a referrals service. Contact them for accredited counsellors in your area by telephone on 0845 124 9569 or by email at . This is the most likely way to find a counsellor quickly.
The UK Christian Handbook has a big list of UK Christian counselling organisations around the country. This is published biannually and available from your local Christian bookstore, or else access the handbook online (you'll have to register but it's free), and look under "services" to get a list of counselling organisations. Unfortunately they are not listed geographically so you will have to search the whole list to find the ones in your locality. This is the definitive list and will always yield some useful contacts.
Type "Christian counselling London" (or whatever your required area is) into a search engine such as Google. Sometimes you get some useful links. There are a surprising number of local Christian counselling organisations in the UK, and this kind of search will normally show up Internet and telephone counselling too, if you're looking for something like that.
Contact the main churches in the required area - they ought to know of local counselling initiatives or individuals who offer help locally.
Contact your local NHS Mental Health Trust psychology department (contact details for Trusts can be found here) and ask if there are any therapists in the team who identify themselves as Christians and could work specifically within a Christian worldview. You may not get very far with this – they'll probably say "don't know" or "you don't need a Christian therapist" (they may be right in many cases) – and you can't self-refer to them anyway (you'd have to go back to your GP with the name of the therapist you wanted to see), but it would encourage heads of department that they need to be thinking seriously about provision for clients who specifically want a therapist who shares their religion. It may also encourage those of us employed clinically by the NHS who are thinking about publicly stating (in our BPS chartership statements or simply within our team at work) that we offer a specialist service to religious clients to get moving! Clients are within their rights to make such a request and research shows that many, whether correct or not, are very reluctant to use the NHS because they assume they would get a secular therapist.

Last updated Tuesday 26 June 2007.