Marriage and Family Therapists
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Job description
These individuals treat psychological suffering that comes from people’s meaningful relationships. They act as experts in marital, family, and relational difficulties. They are self-employed or work in:
- Social service agencies
- Government agencies
- Family therapy centres
- Health care facilities
- Private settings
Environment
- Controlled ambient temperature
Main tasks
- Assess the relational dynamics of individuals, couples, or families.
- Design and implement marital and family therapy.
- Carry out therapy using psychotherapy.
- Restore and improve communication patterns within couples and families.
- Assess individuals with respect to child care and access rights, as required.
- Assess people who want to adopt a child.
- Find additional or parallel services and refer clients to them, as required.
- Provide public information or consultation services to other professionals or groups as appropriate.
- Testify in court as an expert witness, as required.
Advancement and mobility
- Possibility of practising family mediation if one obtains an accreditation in family mediation.
Training and requirements
Formation
Most training programs are offered in French only.
University
Social work
Bachelor’s degree
Placement rate: 88.8%
7.9% of graduates pursue further studies
Master’s degree
Placement rate: 84.4%
9.9% of graduates pursue further studies
Also required
- Membership in the Ordre des travailleurs sociaux et des thérapeutes conjugaux et familiaux du Québec (OTSTCFQ [Quebec Order of Social Workers and Conjugal and Family Therapists]).
- Psychotherapist’s licence to practise conjugal and family therapy, the latter being a form of psychotherapy.
Main skills and characteristics
Skills
- Active listening
- Data collection
- Social perception
- Oral expression
- Judgment and decision-making
- Service oriented
- Reading comprehension
- Critical thought
- Written expression
- Solving complex problems
- Result evaluation
- Persuasion
- Active learning
- Negotiation
- Teaching
- Coordination
- Information processing
- System analysis
- Operation analysis
- Time management
- Human resource management
- Learning strategies
Abilities
- Oral comprehension
- Awareness of issues
- Speech clarity
- Verbal skills
- Written comprehension
- Deductive reasoning
- Written expression
- Inductive reasoning
- Speech recognition
- Idea generation
- Originality
- Classification
- Information organization
- Selective attention
- Near vision
- Information processing speed
- Processing flexibility
Knowledge and attributes
- Capacity to establish and maintain interpersonal relations
- Autonomy
- Sense of responsibility
- Capacity to adapt
- Capacity to work in a team
- Sense of initiative
- Capacity to be discrete
- Capacity to facilitate a group
- Knowledge of psychology
- Knowledge of therapy and counselling
Interests
- Draft, communicate, and inform
- Self-employment
- Assist and advise
- Assist or care for people
Personality profiles (RIASEC)
- Social
- People with this profile prefer to be in contact with others, in particular to entertain, help or teach them.
- Investigative
- People with this profile prefer relying on theoretical knowledge before acting. They like observation, analysis and problem solving.
- Enterprising
- People with this profile prefer having responsibilities, influencing others and responding to challenges.
Appellation d’emploi liée (à traduire)
Therapists in counselling and related specialized therapies (CNP 41301)
Skill type
Education, law and social, community and government services
Related occupations
Last update: January 29, 2026