Questions to Ask Therapists   When Choosing a Therapist, you may want to ask the following questions:
How long has your therapists been in a full-time private practice? (I.e. sees at least 20-30 clients per week? Is your therapist a psychologist with a doctorate degree in psychology? Or do your therapists have a master's degree in counseling or social work/marriage/and family therapy? (Some marriage and family therapists may have doctorates degrees) How many hours of couple's therapy has your therapist provided to the public on an average weekly basis? There is a big difference in experience between therapists who see one or two couple in a month for 2 years, verses a therapist that sees 15-25 couples a week over a 10 year period of time. If you therapist says they have 5, 10, or even 20 years of experience where did that experience occur? If they say they have 20 years of experience but 18 years of that experience has been doing evaluations and counseling in the court of criminal justice system and only 2 years has been providing couples therapy, then that is a lot different than if your therapist worked 5 years doing evaluations for a public agency, providing couple's therapy for 15 years, seeing 10 couples a week.
	In short, you probably want your therapist to be experience in evaluating and treating couples. Yet, there is no universal standard for what constitutes adequate experience as it may vary from therapist to therapist. It's also important to note that no one particular type of credential in necessarily better than another. Sometimes an experienced master's degree therapist such as a counselor can provide excellent services and a person with a doctorate degree not provides good services. Arizona Couples uses only a psychologist to provide couple's therapy because it believes the credibility of the psychologist is rigorous and comprehensive to the public.