Two of these titles are regulated by law. Two are not, and anyone can use them. Here is how to tell, and what to ask when there is no register to check.
Someone decides they need help. They open a search, and within a minute they are looking at four words that sound like they mean roughly the same thing: counsellor, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist. Some cost ₹800 and some cost ₹4,000. Nothing explains the difference.
I am one of these things, and I want to be straightforward about which one, because the honest version of this article is more useful to you than the flattering one.
A doctor. MBBS, then a postgraduate degree in psychiatry, an MD or a DNB. Registered with a State Medical Council and appearing on the National Medical Commission's register.
A psychiatrist is the only one of the four who can prescribe medication. If antidepressants or anything similar are part of the answer, this is the person.
A protected title, and the protection is real. Under the Rehabilitation Council of India Act 1992, you need an RCI-recognised qualification, usually an M.Phil in Clinical Psychology, and you must be registered on the Central Rehabilitation Register.
Using the title without that registration is an offence under the Act. Worth knowing, though also worth knowing that the maximum fine written into the 1992 Act is ₹1,000, which was a meaningful number in 1992 and is not one now.
A clinical psychologist diagnoses, does psychological testing, and does therapy. They do not prescribe.
None of these titles is defined, protected, or registrable with any statutory body in India.
The RCI's Act lists the professions it governs and general counselling is not among them. No other body claims it either. There is no licence to earn, no examination to sit, no minimum qualification, and no register you can look someone up on.
Anyone can use these words. Today. About themselves.
The bare word "psychologist" is not protected either. Neither Act defines it. Only the compound title "clinical psychologist" is. So a person can lawfully describe themselves as "a psychologist" in India with no registration at all, as long as they do not claim to be a clinical psychologist.
That overlap catches people out, and it is worth holding on to when you are reading a profile.
The Mental Healthcare Act 2017 uses the phrase "mental health professional" as a defined legal term rather than a general description.
Read alongside section 55, which sets out who a State Mental Health Authority may register, the category comes to four kinds of person: a psychiatrist, an RCI-registered clinical psychologist, a mental health nurse, and a psychiatric social worker.
Counsellors, therapists and counselling psychologists are not in that list.
That does not make counselling unlawful, and it does not make counsellors bad at their work. Plenty of the best practitioners I know are outside that list, either by choice or because their training followed a route that does not lead to it. But if you have been assuming the phrase "mental health professional" is a general compliment rather than a statutory category, it is worth knowing that in Indian law it is the second thing.
A clinical psychologist. The RCI's Central Rehabilitation Register is public and searchable at rciregistration.nic.in. You can search by name or registration number, no login. If someone tells you they are a clinical psychologist, they are on this register or they should not be using the title.
A psychiatrist. The Indian Medical Register at nmc.org.in, also public and searchable. One caveat the NMC states itself: the register is being updated, so a name not appearing is not proof of anything. Treat a blank result as a reason to ask a direct question, not as a verdict.
A counsellor or therapist. There is no register. This is the part I cannot solve for you, so here is the next best thing: five questions worth asking, and the answers you want.
What exactly did you train in, and who awarded it? You want a specific course, a specific
institution, and a number of hours. Vagueness here is the signal.
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Do you have supervision? This means a more experienced practitioner they take their work to,
regularly, to be checked. The answer should be yes and it should be current. Someone practising
with nobody looking over their shoulder is the thing to worry about, far more than the letters
after their name.
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Which things do you not work with? Anyone who says they work with everything is telling you
something. A real answer names limits.
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What happens if I need medication? You want to hear that they will refer you to a psychiatrist,
and ideally that they already know one.
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And if I want to stop? The answer should be uncomplicated.
Those five questions will tell you more than any credential would. Ask them out loud, on a call, and listen to how it feels to ask them. A person who is good at this will not mind being asked.
Roughly, and it genuinely is rough:
Start with a psychiatrist if you are not sleeping or eating, if you have had thoughts of harming yourself, if something has changed sharply rather than slowly, or if a previous episode responded to medication.
Start with a therapist or counsellor if you are functioning but something has been getting heavier, if it is about a relationship, a family, work, a loss, or a pattern you keep repeating.
They work together often. Medication and talking are not competing options and a lot of people do both. If your therapist has never mentioned a psychiatrist and you think you might need one, ask.
Tele-MANAS is free. Call 14416 or 1-800-891-4416. It is around the clock, across India, in multiple languages, and it is a government service rather than a lesser version of one. If tonight is the problem, this is the number.
Government hospitals and the district mental health programme cost very little, though the waiting is real. NIMHANS in Bengaluru is the best known. I have written separately about what therapy actually costs in India, with the numbers and where they come from.
I am a counsellor. I trained in 2015 and I have been doing this for ten years.
That title is not regulated in India. There is no register you can look me up on, and I am not a "mental health professional" in the specific sense the Mental Healthcare Act uses that phrase. I am not a psychiatrist and I cannot prescribe you anything.
I would rather you knew all of that from me than worked it out later. And I would rather you asked me those five questions than took my word for any of it.
The legal claims come from the bare Acts rather than from summaries of them: the Rehabilitation Council of India Act 1992 at sections 2(n), 13, 20 and 23, and the Mental Healthcare Act 2017 at sections 2(r), 2(y) and 55(1)(d), read on indiacode.nic.in.
Verification tools linked above are the RCI's Central Rehabilitation Register and the National Medical Commission's Indian Medical Register, both public and both tested. Tele-MANAS numbers came from its official platform.
Written by Satlaj Sachan, a counsellor in Bengaluru working Book a first conversation.