What is a Marriage Therapist?

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists are trained as relationship specialists who help people transform their relationships with others and with themselves into healthy, fulfilling experiences.

During the therapy process, adults, children, couples, or families spend time with a skilled clinician to address concerns which may be causing distress. The seed for growth and change is perceived to be within individuals and their relationships. The therapist acts as a catalyst for the process of individual and interpersonal growth.

Marriage and family therapy is:

• brief
• solution-focused
• specific, with attainable therapeutic goals
• designed with the "end in mind"

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, also known as MFTs or LMFTs, are clinicians with a minimum of a master's degree in psychology, clinical psychology, counseling psychology, or marriage and family therapy.

They are trained to understand family systems and provide counseling and psychotherapy from a variety of therapeutic orientations and work with individual adults and children, couples, families, and groups.

MFTs treat a wide range of clinical problems in both children and adults. These problems can be serious in nature, such as in mood disorders, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, etc., or they can be everyday problems, less serious in nature, such as improving communication or increasing parenting skills. Issues are addressed while keeping in mind how they impact functioning and relationships. Strong and healthy relationships (marital, family, work, school or social) positively impact functioning and life fulfillment.

Today more than 50,000 marriage and family therapists treat individuals, couples and families nationwide.