How to find an English-speaking therapist in Berlin

Search by language in the official directory

The practitioner search at arztsuche.116117.de, which KV Berlin links to from its own site, lists every psychotherapist in Berlin with a Kassensitz. Enter your postcode, then open the filters: Psychotherapie narrows it to therapy practices, and Fremdsprachen lets you pick English. Practices enter their own languages and nobody checks them, and the search doesn't say who has capacity, so treat the result as a list to contact, not an answer. The search of the Deutsche Psychotherapeutenvereinigung at dptv.de is worth running alongside it: it has a language filter too, and it can also show private practices that work through Kostenerstattung.

What 116117 can and can't do in Berlin

KV Berlin runs the Terminservicestelle for the city. It arranges a psychotherapeutische Sprechstunde, Akutbehandlung and first trial sessions for publicly insured people who live in Berlin, by phone on 116117 or online at 116117-termine.de. KV Berlin also says plainly that treatment in a foreign language can't be taken into account when it arranges an appointment. That makes it the quickest way to your Sprechstunde and PTV 11, but not to an English-speaking therapist, so run both searches at the same time.

Search the whole city, not just your district

For therapist planning, Berlin has been one single planning area (Planungsbereich) since July 2003, so the city's capacity is counted as a whole, not district by district. In practice the seats aren't spread evenly. Figures reported by the Deutsches Ärzteblatt in 2013 put supply in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf at 421 percent of the planning target and in Marzahn-Hellersdorf at 31 percent. The numbers have moved since, but the pattern is the reason a search across the city turns up more practices than one limited to your own Kiez. Video sessions widen the field further.

University clinics and training centres

Berlin's universities and psychotherapy training institutes run outpatient clinics that treat publicly insured patients. At a training clinic (Ausbildungsambulanz) you're treated by therapists in training under supervision, and getting a place there is sometimes easier than at a private practice. Whether a clinic can treat in English depends on who is free, so ask each one directly. If you study at the Freie Universität, its psychological counselling service keeps a list of training centres and hands it out on request.

Contacting practices

Practice receptions in Berlin don't always speak English comfortably, even when the therapist does, and the Freie Universität's own guide for international students warns about exactly this. Email is often easier than a phone call, gives you a record for a possible Kostenerstattung application, and a short first message in German gets answered more often. Contact several practices at once, and keep a log of the date, the practice and the answer.

If you need help now

The Berliner Krisendienst helps in psychological crises around the clock, free of charge and anonymously if you want. Its nine local offices take calls and visits without an appointment from 16:00 to midnight every day, and the Mitte office covers the whole city overnight and during the daytime at weekends and on public holidays. Conversations are usually in German, but the service tries to arrange advice in other languages, which takes some preparation, so say that you need English when you call. For Mitte and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg the number is 030 390 63 10, and the numbers for the other districts are on its English page. In an emergency, call 112.