How to Become a Marriage and Family Therapist
Marriage and family therapists help couples and families work through relationship issues, communication problems, and mental health challenges affecting the family unit. To become a licensed MFT, you'll need a bachelor's degree (four years), a COAMFTE-accredited or equivalent master's degree (2-3 years), supervised clinical hours (1,500 in New York to 3,000 in California and Texas), and state licensure. The median salary is $63,780 per year as of 2024, with the 90th percentile earning $111,610 annually.
At some point in every relationship, conflict arises. For many families, issues can be resolved amicably without long-term consequences, but sometimes problems require professional intervention due to differing personalities, behavioral challenges, or mental health conditions.
As a marriage and family therapist, you have the unique opportunity to help guide families back to a healthier path. Your empathetic nature, expert skillset, and dedication to bringing families together allow you to frame conflict in different perspectives and provide the tools your clients need to communicate more effectively and compassionately.
This comprehensive guide explores how to become a marriage and family therapist, including education requirements, licensure steps, salary expectations, and career opportunities in this rewarding mental health career.
Table of Contents
- What Is Marriage and Family Therapy?
- Why Do We Need Marriage and Family Therapy?
- What Does a Marriage and Family Therapist Do?
- Where Does a Marriage and Family Therapist Work?
- Steps to Becoming a Marriage and Family Therapist
- Education Requirements
- Salary and Job Outlook
- Career Specializations
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Marriage and Family Therapy?
Marriage and family therapy is a specialized form of counseling that helps families work through issues that affect their home lives and relationships. This encompasses any kind of familial grouping, including couples, parents and children, blended families, siblings, extended families, or any other type of relationship dynamic.
Working together with a marriage and family therapist can help couples minimize the possibility of divorce, help parents argue less and communicate better with their children, and create more harmonious home environments. The result is reduced stress on everyone involved and stronger family bonds.
All different types of families might be affected by any number of problems. However, a few very common arguments arise in many families, causing undue stress and challenges, including:
- Infidelity and trust issues
- Jealousy and insecurity
- Financial disagreements and money management
- Conflicting parenting styles and child-rearing approaches
- Division of household responsibilities
- Substance abuse problems
- Mental illness affecting family members
- Teenage rebellion and parent-child conflicts
- Career stress impacting family time
- Blended family adjustment challenges
Why Do We Need Marriage and Family Therapy?
Catching and resolving marriage and family problems as soon as possible can help minimize most of the negative effects down the road. Married couples that don't resolve their issues may end up getting divorced, which will affect their children as well as themselves. Many parenting experts agree that separations and divorces are generally rougher on the children in a family than on the adults.
Even if couples don't get divorced, the consequences of a volatile home life can still have very devastating long-term effects, including:
- Emotional detachment from future partners
- Attention-seeking or reckless behavior
- Substance abuse issues or other harmful coping mechanisms
- Difficulty forming healthy relationships
- Increased anxiety and depression
- Academic and professional challenges
Marriage and family therapists serve to help their patients avoid these outcomes by teaching families how to communicate more effectively and work out their differences. For many families, marriage and family therapy is often well spent, reducing the time spent fighting as well as the risk of divorce.
What Does a Marriage and Family Therapist Do?
A marriage and family therapist uses psychotherapy tools, skills, and principles to repair family relationships and treat any underlying psychological issues that may be contributing to the discord. MFTs can diagnose and treat a variety of disorders that affect the family unit, from clinical disorders like depression, anxiety, and personality disorders to simpler issues like poor communication or heightened stress.
Assessment and Diagnosis
For families in distress, it can often be hard to pinpoint the causes of their arguments. This is often one of the first duties of a marriage and family therapist. They'll typically first meet and talk with all members of a family to assess the situation and determine the right treatment path. Most of the time, the therapist will continue to meet with the couple or family together to help them see how each family member reacts to the others. In some circumstances, however, a therapist may choose to meet with members of a family separately.
Therapeutic Techniques and Tools
After discovering some possible underlying causes of major problems in a family, a marriage and family therapist can then help the family as a whole work through their issues. The therapist will often offer guidance and advice to frustrated family members or teach them how to communicate more effectively. During therapy sessions, a marriage and family therapist may use several tools to allow patients to work through their difficulties:
- Talk therapy: A marriage and family therapist will often start by letting clients each relay their side of the issues and will do more listening than talking during these meetings.
- Bodily observation: The therapist will also watch the members of a family closely for non-verbal body language or clues to where certain problems may lie. For instance, a marriage and family therapist who witnesses a teenager rolling her eyes might deduce that actions such as these might make her parents feel disrespected.
- Role-playing exercises: During a session, a therapist may ask their clients to imagine themselves in the other person's shoes and do a role-playing activity to break their singular perspective and achieve a deeper level of empathy.
- Reflection exercises: Having family members reflect on specific memories can often speak volumes about how each interprets and reacts to different situations. This can also help bring feelings of warmth and togetherness when reflecting on happier times and remembering when communication and perspectives were more aligned.
- Reframing exercises: A common tool in a marriage and family therapist's arsenal, a reframing exercise can be incredibly helpful to defuse tension created by accusations made in anger. For example, instead of, "You never listen and always talk over me," a reframing exercise alters this statement to, "When you interrupt me when I speak, I feel like my words and opinions aren't valid or valued."
It's important to understand that as a marriage and family therapist, you won't be the magic cure that ends all arguments in a household. Disagreements are part of being in any relationship. Instead of teaching families how to stop arguing, you'll help them learn to communicate more effectively, work through their differences, and become a stronger family unit.
Where Does a Marriage and Family Therapist Work?
Marriage and family therapists might work in several different settings, from clinical environments and medical clinics to schools and government agencies. They may work as part of a team with other medical professionals or on their own as either a consultant or a private practitioner.
Common workplace settings include:
- Private practice (individual or group)
- Social service offices
- Community mental health centers
- Mental health facilities
- Hospitals and inpatient care clinics
- Schools and universities
- Addiction treatment centers
- Nursing homes and assisted living facilities
- Juvenile correction facilities
- Employee assistance programs (EAPs)
- Telehealth platforms (growing rapidly)
Many marriage and family therapists choose to open their own private practices, and a few might even make house calls, which involve visiting a household to observe the living situation or meeting at a neutral location to diffuse situational tension. Either of these options are often used during interventional events. However, it's far more common for the patients to visit the therapist's place of work for sessions.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists maintain clear professional boundaries to provide effective care. Understanding how therapists avoid treating their own family and friends is essential to ethical practice and self-care in this demanding field.
Steps to Becoming a Marriage and Family Therapist
If you're wondering what qualifications you need to be a family therapist, understand that learning how to become a marriage and family therapist starts with assessing whether your passions and personality align with the unique needs of the profession. Aside from a genuine interest in helping families, becoming a marriage and family counselor requires a few key characteristics:
- Excellent listening and communication skills
- Objectivity and the ability to offer an unbiased, non-judgmental ear
- A calm and peaceful demeanor to help diffuse situations of high tension
- Comfort level with discussing extremely personal topics
- Strong commitment to confidentiality and privacy
- Cultural sensitivity and awareness
- Patience and resilience
- Strong ethical foundation
The Path to Licensure
If this sounds like you, then your next steps in how to become a marriage counselor are as follows:
- Earn a bachelor's degree (four years) in psychology, social work, counseling, or a related field
- Complete a master's degree (2-3 years) in marriage and family therapy from a COAMFTE-accredited or equivalent program
- Accumulate supervised clinical hours (2-3 years, often due to part-time work or supervision availability) working under a licensed therapist or counselor
- Pass the required licensing exams, including the AMFTRB National MFT Examination
- Apply for state licensure through your state's specific certification board
- Complete continuing education throughout your career to maintain current licensure
The entire process from starting college to becoming fully licensed typically takes 8-11 years, depending on your state's requirements and whether you pursue full-time or part-time study.
While pursuing your COAMFTE-accredited master's degree, take advantage of marriage and family therapy scholarships and financial aid to minimize student debt and focus on clinical training hours.
What Are the Education Requirements to Become a Marriage and Family Therapist?
A marriage and family therapist career requires a good deal of education, much like other mental health and therapy careers. You will typically start by earning a bachelor's degree in an area such as psychology, social work, or counseling. This generally will take you around four years to complete, though it depends on how your program is structured, whether your study is self-directed (such as with an online psychology program), and additional factors.
Bachelor's Degree Requirements
While earning your marriage and family therapist degree at the undergraduate level, you should focus on taking as many courses that cover the marriage and family dynamic as possible, selecting electives in those areas if they aren't already part of your program's general curriculum. Relevant coursework includes:
- General psychology and human development
- Abnormal psychology
- Family systems theory
- Developmental psychology across the lifespan
- Research methods and statistics
- Cultural diversity and multicultural counseling
- Communication theory
- Ethics in mental health
Master's Degree Requirements
After earning your bachelor's degree, most state licensing boards require you to earn your master's degree to become a licensed marriage and family therapist. Your program should ideally be accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE), though some states accept programs with equivalent coursework from other accrediting bodies. Check with your state licensing board for specific requirements.
Nationally recognized accrediting bodies include:
- Master's in Psychology and Counseling Accreditation Counsel (MPCAC)
- Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) - Gold standard for MFT programs
- Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)
Your master's in marriage and family therapy often takes anywhere from two to three years, including the supervised clinical fieldwork that you'll need to complete as part of your licensing preparations. Core coursework in a master's program typically includes:
- Marriage and family therapy theories and techniques
- Couples therapy interventions
- Child and adolescent development and therapy
- Family systems assessment and diagnosis
- Group therapy facilitation
- Crisis intervention and trauma therapy
- Psychopharmacology basics
- Professional ethics and legal issues
- Research and program evaluation
- Multicultural and diversity issues in therapy
Supervised Clinical Experience
The exact number of supervised hours required varies significantly from state to state. For example:
- New York: Requires 1,500 hours of supervised work experience
- California: Requires 3,000 hours of supervised work experience
- Illinois: Requires 3,000 hours of supervised clinical experience
- Texas: Requires 3,000 hours, including specific direct client contact hours
Check with your state licensing board for specifics on these requirements and learn more about earning your MFT degrees online.
Continuing Education
Once you've completed your marriage and family therapist degree and earned your state license, your education isn't over. Most states require that you complete continuing education courses throughout your career in order to stay current with the latest advances in therapeutic philosophies, tools, and skills. These additional courses will also firmly establish you as an expert in your field, making your practice highly desirable for families seeking support and intervention.
You can also pursue separate certification in specific areas that you think will benefit your practice. This additional education includes specializations in art therapy, trauma-focused therapy, parent-child interactions, and more.
What Is the Salary and Job Outlook for Marriage and Family Therapists?
Understanding the financial prospects of any career is essential when making educational decisions. The good news is that marriage and family therapists enjoy competitive salaries with strong growth potential.
National Salary Data (2024)
According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data from May 2024, marriage and family therapists earn competitive salaries with significant variation based on experience and location:
- Median Annual Salary: $63,780
- Mean Annual Salary: $72,720
- Entry Level (10th percentile): $42,610
- Mid-Career (25th percentile): $48,600
- Experienced (75th percentile): $85,020
- Top Earners (90th percentile): $111,610
- Total U.S. Employment: 65,870 MFTs
These figures represent a significant increase from previous years, reflecting the growing demand for mental health services and the increasing recognition of MFTs as essential healthcare providers.
Marriage and family therapists can expect strong career prospects, with national median salaries of $63,780 and 14% projected job growth through 2031.
Salary by State
There are significant geographic variations in MFT salaries. Here are the top-paying states and those with the highest employment levels:
| State | Employment | Median Salary | Mean Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaii | 220 | $135,870 | $145,360 |
| Connecticut | 390 | $76,930 | $94,830 |
| Colorado | 810 | $69,990 | $89,280 |
| New Jersey | Not Available | Not Available | $83,590 |
| California | 32,070 | $63,780 | $74,660 |
| Indiana | 1,120 | $51,710 | $58,430 |
| Illinois | 840 | $60,140 | $66,640 |
California has by far the largest employment rate of marriage and family therapists, with over 32,000 professionals, followed by Indiana and Illinois. While California doesn't have the highest salaries, the sheer number of opportunities and the state's diverse population make it an attractive location for MFT careers.
Salary by Work Setting
Where you work can significantly impact your earning potential:
- Home healthcare services: Typically offer the highest salaries, with median incomes exceeding $121,000
- Private practice: Income varies widely based on client volume, insurance panels, and cash-pay rates
- Outpatient care centers: Generally offer competitive salaries with benefits
- Government agencies: Provide stable salaries with excellent benefits and retirement plans
- Social service organizations: Typically offer lower salaries but meaningful work and loan forgiveness opportunities
Job Growth Outlook
The career outlook for marriage and family therapists is exceptionally strong. The increased awareness of mental health issues, reduced stigma around seeking therapy, and growing insurance coverage for mental health services all contribute to expanding career opportunities in this field.
For an honest perspective on what daily life as a therapist looks like, including common challenges and rewards, read what MFTs wish they knew before becoming therapists.
Career Specializations and Advanced Opportunities
As a marriage and family therapist, you can choose to specialize in specific areas that align with your interests and community needs. These specializations can lead to higher earning potential and more focused, rewarding work.
Common Specialization Areas
- Trauma and PTSD: Working with families affected by traumatic events, including military families, survivors of abuse, or those who've experienced disasters
- Substance Abuse and Addiction: Helping families navigate recovery, set boundaries, and rebuild trust after addiction
- Child and Adolescent Focus: Specializing in parent-child relationships, behavioral issues, and developmental challenges
- Divorce and Co-Parenting: Helping families transition through separation while minimizing impact on children
- Blended Family Dynamics: Supporting stepfamilies in creating cohesive family units
- LGBTQ+ Affirming Therapy: Providing culturally competent care for LGBTQ+ individuals and families
- Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Counseling: Working with diverse populations and addressing cultural considerations in therapy
- Sexual Health and Intimacy: Addressing sexual dysfunction, intimacy issues, and relationship satisfaction
- Geriatric Family Therapy: Working with aging families, caregiver stress, and end-of-life planning
- Telehealth and Online Therapy: Providing remote services through secure video platforms
Additional Certifications
Beyond your LMFT license, you can pursue specialized certifications that enhance your expertise and marketability:
- Approved Supervisor credential from AAMFT
- Gottman Method Couples Therapy certification
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) certification
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) training
- Clinical Member status with AAMFT
Frequently Asked Questions About Becoming a Marriage and Family Therapist
How long does it take to become a marriage and family therapist?
The complete process typically takes 8-11 years from starting your bachelor's degree to becoming fully licensed. This includes 4 years for a bachelor's degree, 2-3 years for a master's degree, and 2-3 years accumulating supervised clinical hours (which often overlaps with your master's program). The timeline varies based on whether you attend school full-time or part-time and your state's specific requirements.
What's the difference between an LMFT, MFT, and AMFT?
These are different stages of licensure. An MFT (Marriage and Family Therapist) is someone trained in the field. An AMFT (Associate Marriage and Family Therapist) has completed their master's degree but is still accumulating supervised hours for full licensure. An LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) has completed all requirements and holds full independent licensure to practice.
Do I need a PhD to be a marriage and family therapist?
No, you don't need a PhD to practice as a marriage and family therapist. A master's degree from an accredited program is sufficient for licensure in all states. However, if you want to teach at the university level, conduct research, or pursue certain specialized positions, a PhD or PsyD might be beneficial.
Can marriage and family therapists diagnose mental illness?
Yes, licensed marriage and family therapists can diagnose mental health conditions and disorders. LMFTs are trained in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning. They can diagnose conditions listed in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and create appropriate treatment plans.
How much do marriage and family therapists make per hour?
Based on the 2024 median annual salary of $63,780, marriage and family therapists earn approximately $30.66 per hour. However, hourly rates vary widely based on location, experience, and work setting. Those in private practice may charge $75-$200+ per hour, depending on their market and specialization.
What states pay MFTs the highest salaries?
Hawaii offers the highest mean salary at $145,360, though with a smaller job market. For states with larger employment opportunities, Connecticut ($94,830), Colorado ($89,280), and California ($74,660) offer strong salaries with more available positions.
Is marriage and family therapy a good career?
Yes, marriage and family therapy is an excellent career for those who are passionate about helping families and relationships. The field offers competitive salaries, strong job growth, flexible work settings (including private practice and telehealth), and the profound satisfaction of helping families heal and thrive. The increasing recognition of mental health's importance ensures continued demand for qualified MFTs.
It's not a role without its challenges, though. Experienced marriage and family therapists often share insights they wish they'd had before starting, including better understanding the emotional toll of client work, the importance of work-life boundaries, and the business aspects of private practice.
Can I transfer my MFT license to another state?
Some states have reciprocity agreements that allow you to transfer your license more easily, while others require you to meet their specific requirements. Many states participate in license portability agreements through the AMFTRB, which can streamline the process. Always check with your target state's licensing board early in the process.
Key Takeaways
- Becoming a marriage and family therapist requires a bachelor's degree, a COAMFTE-accredited master's degree, and 1,500-3,000 supervised clinical hours, depending on your state.
- The median salary for MFTs is $63,780 annually as of 2024, with top earners making over $111,000. Geographic location and work setting significantly impact earning potential.
- The complete education and licensure process typically takes 8-11 years, but offers a rewarding career helping families navigate challenges and strengthen relationships.
- MFTs work in diverse settings, including private practice, hospitals, schools, community centers, and increasingly through telehealth platforms.
- Specialization in areas like trauma therapy, addiction counseling, or LGBTQ+ affirming therapy can enhance your career opportunities and earning potential.
- Job growth for marriage and family therapists is strong due to increased mental health awareness and expanding insurance coverage for therapy services.
Ready to Start Your Journey as a Marriage and Family Therapist?
Explore accredited MFT programs that align with your career goals and set yourself up for a lifetime of helping families thrive.
2024 US Bureau of Labor Statistics salary figures and job growth projections for Marriage & Family Therapists are based on state and national data, not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Data accessed October 2025.
