Can Therapists Ask Clients for Google Reviews?

No, and the reason is not HIPAA. Asking a therapy client for a Google review is soliciting a testimonial, which the APA, ACA and NASW ethics codes all restrict. HIPAA is a second, separate problem that shows up mostly when you reply to a review. Both have to be satisfied, and clinicians usually worry about the wrong one first.

This question comes up because every piece of local marketing advice ever written says the same thing: ask happy customers for reviews. For a plumber that is correct. For a licensed mental health clinician it describes a disciplinable act, and the advice almost never carries a warning.

Can therapists ask clients for reviews?

No. A review is a testimonial, and the ethics codes govern testimonials regardless of where they get published. The exact wording depends on your license, and the three major codes do not agree with each other:

The word doing the work in all three is solicit. None of these codes says a testimonial about you may never exist. They say you may not go and get one from a person who is not in a position to refuse you comfortably.

That is the whole logic, and it is worth understanding rather than memorizing, because it predicts the answer to every variation of this question you will ever have. A client has told you things they have told nobody else. They may believe, accurately or not, that their care depends on your goodwill. When their therapist asks them for a favor, "no" costs them something it would never cost a customer declining a software vendor. The codes call that being vulnerable to undue influence.

Can psychologists ask for reviews?

Not from current therapy clients or patients. APA Standard 5.05 reads: "Psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence." Note the second clause. It is not limited to people currently on your caseload, and a client discharged last month is an obvious candidate for it.

Psychologists can and do publish endorsements from people outside the therapy relationship: organizations that hired them to train or speak, consultation clients, workshop attendees, referring colleagues. Standard 5.01 still applies to all of it, so nothing you publish may be false or deceptive.

Can a therapist ask a former client for a review?

This is where the codes genuinely diverge, and where generic advice does the most damage. If you are a counselor bound by the ACA code, the answer is a flat no: C.3.b names former clients explicitly. The frequently repeated suggestion to simply wait until after termination and then ask does not work for you, and an article written for psychologists will tell you it does.

If you are a psychologist or a social worker, former clients are not named, but the vulnerability clause still reaches them. Discharge does not dissolve the imbalance that created the concern. Someone may return to treatment, may need a records request, may need you to talk to an attorney or a school. Treat former clients as restricted unless your licensing board has told you otherwise in writing.

What about a client who leaves a review on their own?

An unsolicited review is not something you did, so the solicitation rules do not reach the review itself. You generally do not have to do anything about it, and trying to do something about it is where practices get into trouble.

The trap is the follow-up. Suppose a client emails you a lovely note at the end of treatment and you would like to put it on your website. Asking whether you may use it feels like the careful, consent-respecting move. For a social worker it is the violation: NASW 4.07(b) prohibits solicitation of testimonial endorsements and then defines that to include, in its own parenthetical, "solicitation of consent to use a client's prior statement as a testimonial endorsement." The unsolicited part protected the note. It does not protect the ask that follows it.

Counselors face a related problem from the other direction. ACA C.3.b requires that you discuss the implications and obtain permission for any testimonial you use, while also prohibiting you from soliciting one. Read together, that means an unsolicited client review is not free to republish on your own site either. It sits where the client put it.

Does HIPAA apply to Google reviews?

Yes, and mostly in a direction clinicians do not expect. HIPAA does not stop a patient from writing whatever they like about you anywhere they like. Patients are not covered entities. What HIPAA governs is what you disclose, and two things you might reasonably want to do are disclosures.

Publishing a client statement in your marketing is a marketing use of protected health information, which requires a written authorization under 45 CFR 164.508. That is a specific document with six core elements and three required statements. An intake-packet clause or a consent checkbox does not satisfy it, and an authorization missing any single element is defective, which is legally the same as not having one. The full element list is in our walkthrough of the patient testimonial consent form.

Can a therapist respond to a Google review?

Not in any way that confirms the person was a client. This is the single most expensive mistake in this whole topic, because responding feels not just harmless but professional, and it is neither.

Acknowledging that someone received treatment is protected health information all by itself, before you say anything clinical. In 2023 the HHS Office for Civil Rights settled with Manasa Health Center, a New Jersey adult and child psychiatric practice, for $30,000 and a corrective action plan after a complaint about a reply to a negative online review. The investigation found that the protected health information of four patients had been impermissibly disclosed in responses to negative Google reviews. The corrective action plan required written policies, workforce training, breach notification letters to the affected individuals, and a breach report to OCR.

Read that fact pattern closely, because it is so ordinary. A small mental health practice got negative reviews and answered them, the way any business would. That is the whole case.

If you are going to respond at all, respond generically and confirm nothing:

Our practice takes privacy obligations seriously, and we are not able to discuss whether any individual has received care here. If you have a concern about our services, please contact our office directly so we can address it.

That reply works whether or not the reviewer was ever a client, which is precisely why it is safe. Never correct a factual claim, never mention appointments, diagnoses, fees, or attendance, and never let an office manager improvise one on your behalf. Staff training is what OCR asked for in the Manasa corrective action plan.

Should therapists remove their Google Business Profile?

Usually not. A profile is how people find you, and deleting it does not delete existing reviews or prevent new ones. The realistic policy is: keep the listing accurate, do not solicit reviews, do not reply to reviews in a way that confirms treatment, and train anyone with access to the account on both rules. If a review is genuinely defamatory or violates platform policy you can request removal through Google's process, which is a different action from replying and does not require you to say anything publicly.

Who can a therapist ask for a review?

Plenty of people, and most private practices never use any of them because they assumed the entire subject was closed. The restriction attaches to the therapy relationship, not to your business.

• Referring colleagues and other clinicians. The most valuable endorsement a therapist can have, and completely unrestricted. Disclose any reciprocal referral arrangement.
• Workshop, training and continuing education attendees. Fine, unless an attendee is also a current client.
• Consulting or coaching clients, where the service is genuinely not therapy. Do not blur that line to unlock a testimonial.
• Supervisees and consultees, with care, and after the supervisory relationship ends. A real power differential exists there too.
• Organizations that hired you to speak, train, or consult.

There is also proof that is not a testimonial at all, and for this audience it may work better. Someone choosing a therapist is not comparing satisfaction scores. They want to know you have treated their specific problem before and that you will be a decent human being in the room. Credentials, modality training, supervision hours, professional memberships, published writing, and an honest description of who you work well with all answer that directly. If prospective clients keep emailing the same questions about insurance, availability and what a first session is like before they will book, an assistant that answers those questions on the site removes more friction than any review would.

The practical policy

Write it down once, and make it a page in your practice manual rather than a decision you re-make every time a review appears:

1. Never ask a current or former therapy client for a review, a testimonial, or permission to use something they already said.
2. Never reply to a review in a way that confirms someone received care. Use one pre-approved generic response, and make sure staff use it too.
3. Collect endorsements from colleagues, supervisees, trainees and non-clinical clients instead, with consent recorded at the moment it is given.
4. Check your state licensing board's advertising rules. Several are stricter than the national codes, and your board is who disciplines you.

One structural note on that third point. Keep audiences on separate pages: supervision feedback belongs on a supervision page, not on the page someone in distress lands on, and mixing them makes both less persuasive. Our page on therapist testimonials compares the three ethics codes provision by provision and covers what a private practice can publish; collecting testimonials covers the request flow, and the testimonial release form covers the permission record itself.

None of this is legal advice, and no software makes a testimonial ethical. Before you publish anything, run your plan past your licensing board and your malpractice carrier, especially if you hold more than one license and therefore sit under more than one of the codes above.