How to Look Up and Verify a Therapist's License in Any State

The primary source is the body that issued the credential.

For counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists and psychologists, that is the state licensing board — its own lookup, roster or verification letter, not a PDF the candidate emailed you.

The Joint Commission's behavioral health care standards require primary source verification of a license, certification or registration when one is required by law or regulation, and they put the job on the accredited organization, not the licensed individual.

Accepting a copy of a license from the candidate does not meet that requirement.

The Joint Commission accepts four routes: direct correspondence with the source, documented telephone verification, secure electronic verification from the original source, or a report from a credentials verification organization that meets its requirements.

A board lookup you run yourself fits that electronic route — the check comes straight from the issuer.

The Joint Commission names four things its documentation must record, whichever route you use: the date of the verification, who conducted it, what was specifically verified and the result.

That record is what an accreditation surveyor or a payer's credentialing team asks to see.

The wider screen around it — exclusion lists, background checks, the FCRA steps — is its own subject: the full hiring screen sets out the order to run those checks in.

This page stays on the license itself.

Coverage varies by state: some boards share one statewide portal while others run a lookup per board, and substance-use credentials often sit on a separate certification-board registry.

The table below covers the states plus the District of Columbia, profession by profession.

We re-checked the underlying links on October 7, 2026; where a search link failed that check, the cell links the board's own page and says so — open it, find its license-search link, and run the search yourself in a browser.

Reading the table.

A cell whose link says board site means the deep search link would not load when we checked.

Some state sites sit behind bot-blocking and CAPTCHA walls that treat automated checks roughly, so a failed automated check does not mean the board's site is down — start from the board page and open its license-search link yourself.

Certification is not licensure.

The rows naming certification boards — the substance-use credentials — verify a certification, not a state license: Arkansas's IC&RC board, California's three credentialing bodies, the Florida Certification Board and the rest.

Which credential an SUD counselor role needs depends on the state — the point for your file is that a certification is a different record from the license a counseling or social work board issues, and the two are not interchangeable.

A note on social work.

Verify social workers on the state board's lookup.

ASWB's Social Work Registry no longer accepts new applications or renewals and is shutting down in March 2027, so it is not a tool to build your process on — the state board is the source.

A search tool is not guaranteed either.

North Dakota's MFT board keeps a licensed-therapists listing page, South Dakota's addiction board posts PDF verification lists, and North Dakota's counselor board posts a licensed-counselors PDF instead of a search.

Where the board publishes the roster itself, the board is still the original source — run the check, save what you see, and record it like any other verification.

Associate-level clinicians hold their own board record, and in the states below it verifies in the same lookup, under the associate code.

The codes differ by state and by profession: Arizona's behavioral health board lookup covers LPC/LAC, LCSW/LMSW/LBSW, LMFT/LAMFT and LISAC/LASAC together; Louisiana's counseling board lists LPC and PLPC, LMFT and PLMFT side by side; Maryland's counselors-and-therapists board covers LCPC and LGPC and LCMFT and LGMFT, and runs a separate page for alcohol-and-drug trainees; South Dakota's counselor board calls its tool "Verify License or Plan of Supervision"; and Texas's HHSC system covers LCDCs and counselor interns.

California shows the pattern in one system: the state's single Department of Consumer Affairs search covers Board of Behavioral Sciences associates as well as LPCCs, LCSWs and LMFTs.

Elsewhere, confirm the associate title in the same board lookup — and if the registration does not appear, ask the board rather than assuming the person is unregistered.

Maryland's separate alcohol-and-drug trainee page shows the pattern: a second tool that a name search in the main lookup can miss.

Two habits for associate files: verify the registration before the first client contact, and file the supervision documentation with it.

The registration is the board's record; the supervision arrangement around it is what makes an associate usable in your practice, and that is a hiring decision of its own.

A compact privilege is a second record, not a shortcut past the board.

The Counseling Compact is live for licensees in ten states — Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming — with Oklahoma going live on October 1, 2026, and the commission says twenty-nine additional states and the District of Columbia are working toward issuing and receiving privileges.

Verify the privilege itself in CompactConnect: the compact's verification page links a search it describes as primary verification of privileges issued under the compact.

Then watch the expiration date.

A privilege expires on the same date as the counselor's home-state license at the time it was issued, and it does not update automatically when the home license is renewed — the counselor renews the privilege in CompactConnect.

Re-checking a compact counselor therefore means pulling the privilege record, not just the home-state license.

How counselors qualify, which states recognize which, and the clinician's side of the arrangement belong to the Counseling Compact explainer — this page is just the verification step.

Social work is not there yet: the Social Work Licensure Compact has been enacted in at least seven states and has reached activation, but no multistate licenses are being issued, and the compact says implementation will take 12 to 24 months.

Until it issues licenses, a social worker's verification stays state by state.

Psychologists have PSYPACT, and it has its own verifier.

The PSYPACT Commission describes verifypsypact.org as a secure, primary source for verifying PSYPACT authorizations, and it lists only psychologists holding an authorization — not all licensed psychologists.

The commission also cautions that the data depends on member-state reporting and may lag, and tells users to consult the individual state's licensing database too.

Treat it the way you treat any lookup: one source, dated and saved.

The lookup shows the license's status.

Discipline is a different question, and no lookup in the table above should be treated as a complete disciplinary history.

Check the board's lookup and its disciplinary-action page; state boards post actions in different places, and the discipline pages were not part of the survey behind this table.

The federal exclusion list will not fill that gap.

A license revocation, suspension or surrender can lead to OIG exclusion, but OIG says probation, censure letters and reprimands do not qualify as a basis for exclusion — so a clean result on the exclusion list does not mean a clean license, and an action like probation, a censure letter or a reprimand can stay off the federal list entirely.

Where do payers come in?

NCQA credentialing accreditation — the standard health plans and similar organizations choose to meet, not a law for employers — requires a license to practice to be verified within 180 days and Medicare/Medicaid sanctions within 120 days before a credentialing decision, plus monthly monitoring of sanctions and license expirations between recredentialing cycles.

You are not bound by that standard, but the plan paneling your new hire probably is — and if a start date slips while credentialing runs, that timeline is the plan's, not a problem with your paperwork.

Record four things on every verification, the fields The Joint Commission names: the date the verification was conducted, who conducted it, what was specifically verified and the result.

Alongside them, keep what the lookup itself returned — license type, number, status and expiration date where the record shows them, plus any restriction it displayed.

A screenshot with the date visible is the cheapest defensible form; an entry in credentialing software works too.

Then re-check on dates you already have.

Compact privileges do not renew when the home license does — the counselor has to renew the privilege in CompactConnect — so calendar the privilege's expiration, not only the license's.

For everything else, tie the re-check to the expiration date on the license and to any milestone your payers set.

Between recredentialing cycles, NCQA-accredited credentialing monitors sanctions and license expirations monthly.

Mirroring that rhythm for the licenses your practice depends on is a sensible cadence, and it costs minutes when the lookups are bookmarked.

When the verifications are clean and the role is ready to post, the behavioral health hiring hub pulls the rest of the employer guides together, role by role.