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Checking that someone is who they say they are

Seven countries, seven registers, and a one-minute check that most people never do before handing over their worst week.

Este es un mapa de cómo funcionan los sistemas, no un diagnóstico ni un plan de tratamiento. No menciona ninguna práctica ni ningún precio privado, porque ninguno de los dos puede mantenerse exacto aquí. No puede decirle qué está mal o qué tratamiento necesita; ese es el trabajo de un médico y comienza con una cita. Nunca suspenda ni cambie un medicamento recetado basándose en una página web. Si la vida de alguien está en peligro en este momento, llame al número de emergencia: 112 en cualquier lugar de la UE y el EEE.

Why the check is worth a minute

Mental-health work is unusually easy to fake and unusually damaging to fake badly. The room is private, the client is by definition not at their strongest, there is no equipment and no laboratory result to be wrong, and in several of these countries at least one of the professional titles is not legally protected at all. Every register named on this page is public, free and searchable by name, and using one takes about as long as reading a menu. It is the single highest-value minute in the whole process.

What each register actually proves

They do not all prove the same thing, and conflating them is the usual mistake. A health-care licence or authorisation — Sweden’s and Finland’s licensed professions, Norway’s health personnel register, Denmark’s authorisation, Estonia’s and Latvia’s registers of medical practitioners — proves that the state has recognised a qualification and that the person is subject to professional supervision, including the power to restrict them. A professional certificate, such as Estonia’s psychologist certificate in the national qualifications register, proves an assessed standard in a named specialisation. Association membership proves that the person has joined an organisation with entry requirements and an ethics code. All three are useful; only the first two involve the state.

A restriction is not the same as an absence

A register entry that exists but carries a restriction, a condition or a suspension is telling you something specific, and it is worth reading the entry rather than only checking that a name appears. Equally, a name that does not appear is not automatically a scandal: people practise under a maiden name, foreign qualifications may be recognised under a different heading, and someone whose base profession is registered may hold a psychotherapy qualification that the register does not record at all because the country does not register it. The correct response to a missing entry is to ask, not to accuse.

Ask the questions the register cannot answer

Three things matter that no register shows. Whether the person is in regular clinical supervision now — a professional standard rather than a sign of inexperience, and a question a qualified therapist answers without hesitation. Whether they carry professional liability insurance. And what happens to your record: where the notes live, how long they are kept, and who can see them. Those three, plus a register check, cover almost everything that can be checked before a first appointment. The confidentiality page explains what the answers should sound like.

Warning signs that are actually diagnostic

A few things are unambiguous rather than a matter of taste, and they cut across every method and every country. A therapist who will not name their qualification or training institute. Guarantees of a cure, or of a result in a number of sessions. Advice to stop a prescribed medicine, which no non-prescriber should ever give. Pressure to buy long packages up front, or to recruit others. Contact that migrates outside the therapy — social, financial or romantic, all of which are prohibited by every professional ethics code in the region. Discouraging you from consulting a doctor, or from telling anyone about the treatment. Any one of these is enough to stop, and it is always allowed to stop.

Los propios registros

Fuentes:JulkiTerhikki (Finland) · Socialstyrelsen (Sweden) · Helsedirektoratet (Norway) · Styrelsen for Patientsikkerhed (Denmark) · Kutseregister (Estonia) · Veselības inspekcija (Latvia)· Las reglas, los derechos y los números de la línea de ayuda cambian: consulte la página del operador antes de confiar en uno. Comprobado2026-09-08.

Preguntas frecuentes

Getting in

Cómo funciona esto donde vives

Cada regla en esta página se filtra a través del sistema de un país antes de llegar a usted. Las páginas de los países llevan las puertas, los registros y los números.

Estonia · Finlandia · Letonia · Lituania · Suecia · Norway · Denmark