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Ask a therapist is a public library of questions with answers written by therapists on Open Therapy. It’s at opentherapy.app/ask, and anyone can read it without an account.
Answers are general information, not advice about you. A therapist answering a question has never met you and can’t diagnose anything or tell you what treatment to have. For that, book a session.If you’re in immediate danger, call 000. To talk to someone now, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or 13YARN on 13 92 76, both 24 hours. Other services are listed in Getting help.

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Asking a question

You need an account to ask, because your email address is how we tell you when someone answers.
The Ask page headed Ask an expert, not a search box, with pills for each care category, a search field, a Recently answered list, and a panel on the right inviting you to sign in to ask a question under your first name or anonymously.

Read by discipline or search what's been asked, and sign in to ask your own

1

Write the question

A title of between 15 and 160 characters — a real question, like “Is it normal to feel worse after the first few sessions?” — and up to 2,000 characters of detail if you want to add any.
2

Pick a topic

Topics are the care categories. The topic decides which therapists are invited to answer, so pick the discipline rather than the mood.
3

Choose how it's published

Leave Ask anonymously off and it goes up under your first name. Turn it on and it’s published with no name and no picture.
4

Post it

Click Ask. You can ask two questions an hour.
Your surname is never shown, either way. Neither is your email address, your location, or anything else from your account.
Most care categories aren’t live yet — psychology and counselling are the ones with therapists practising. A question filed under a category still being rolled out may wait a long time for an answer.

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Leave yourself out of it

Leave out anything that would identify you or somebody else. The page is public and it stays up. Questions naming a practitioner, identifying a third party, or asking for a medication dose or a diagnosis are turned away. So are questions containing phone numbers, email addresses or links — use Messages to reach someone privately.

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Moderation before publication

Every question is screened before it’s published. Answers are screened the same way, against the same line: general information yes, personal clinical advice no. If a question reads as somebody in immediate distress, it isn’t published and it isn’t stored. The form is replaced with crisis services instead.

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Who answers

Therapists with a published, verified listing on Open Therapy, in the discipline the topic maps to. When a question goes up, up to 25 of them are emailed about it; the rest see it waiting in their workspace. Nobody is assigned and nobody is paid to answer, so some questions get several answers and some get none. A question still unanswered after a week or two is better asked of a therapist directly. You’re emailed when your question is answered. The email names the therapist and links to the page, but doesn’t quote the answer.

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Reading and answers

Answers sit under the question, ordered by This helped votes. Click it to vote for one. Related questions in the same topic are listed at the bottom, and you can browse a whole topic at /ask/topic/psychology and the like.
A question page asking whether it is normal to feel worse after the first few sessions of therapy, marked as asked anonymously, with the asker's detail quoted, three answers below it written by a named clinical psychologist, a This helped button with a vote count, and related psychology questions listed on the right.

Each answer names the therapist who wrote it and carries a This helped count

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Answers are public and searchable

Every published question has its own page and its own address, and those pages are in the sitemap, meant to be found by search engines. If that isn’t comfortable, use Ask anonymously, or ask your therapist instead. A question isn’t part of your clinical record. A therapist answering sees the question, the topic, and your first name unless you asked anonymously — not your account, and not anything you’ve filled in as somebody’s client.