Subscribe to Our Newsletter
To get the latest tips and news to support your well-being journey!
Your mental health deserves more than a search result. Before any specialist can offer sessions on SympathiQ, they go through a five-step verification process — and we hold them to those standards for as long as they practise on the platform.
No specialist appears on SympathiQ until all five checks are complete:
Identity check. Every applicant verifies their identity with a government-issued ID. Once verified, the ID document is permanently deleted from our systems within 14 days — we confirm who they are, then we remove the evidence rather than store it.
Professional qualification. We review the specialist's degree or equivalent professional qualification in their field of practice.
Professional certificate / registration. We check the specialist's current certificate of practice against the recognised professional body in their country of practice — for example the BACP, UKCP or HCPC in the UK, and the equivalent national registers elsewhere. A specialist is only approved if their registration is valid and current with the relevant body.
Professional indemnity insurance. Every specialist must hold valid professional indemnity insurance covering their practice.
Background check. Specialists undergo a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check in the UK, or the equivalent national background check in their country of practice. Specialists who work with under-18s or vulnerable adults must pass an Enhanced DBS check (or its national equivalent) before approval.
Our checks are ongoing, not one-time. Certificates, insurance and background checks all carry expiry dates — when a document expires, the specialist must renew it to continue practising on SympathiQ. Expired credentials mean suspended access until valid documents are provided.
Where your data lives. All platform data is stored on AWS servers located in Europe, and processed in accordance with the UK GDPR and EU GDPR.
ID documents are not retained. Specialist ID documents are deleted within 14 days of verification. We do not keep copies.
Your sessions are private. Sessions are never recorded by default. A session is only recorded if both you and your specialist explicitly agree to it — otherwise it remains completely private between the two of you.
You control your information. You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data at any time by emailing contact@sympathiq.com.
For full details, see our Privacy Policy.
We take every concern seriously. You can raise a complaint through two routes:
Contact support — reach our team via our contact page or at contact@sympathiq.com with any concern about a specialist, a session, or the platform, at any time.
Open a dispute after a session — after any online session, you can open a dispute directly from the platform, and our team will review it.
We acknowledge every complaint within 48 hours. Our team reviews each report, and where a specialist has breached our standards, outcomes range from a formal warning to suspension or permanent removal from the platform.
SympathiQ exists so that finding support feels safe from the very first click. If anything on this page raises a question, contact us — we'd rather answer it than leave you wondering.