Methodology for the MentionFox Therapist Vetting Report. Updated 2026-05-10.
The MentionFox Therapist Vetting Report is a research synthesis built from public-record sources. It is NOT a license-of-record verification, NOT a clinical-competence assessment, NOT a fit-for-care assessment, NOT a substitute for state licensing-board verification of record, NOT malpractice insurance verification, and NOT a substitute for due diligence through your insurance plan's credentialing process. Read this page in full before relying on the report for a referral, hiring, or care decision.
"Therapist" in the United States is not a single license type — the report covers the four broad clinical-mental-health license families: Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), Licensed Professional Counselor and variants (LPC, LPCC, LMHC, LCPC), and Licensed Psychologist (PhD or PsyD). Each license type is regulated state-by-state by a different licensing board. There is no single federal therapist license. Therapists with insurance billing capability are NPI-registered (taxonomy varies by license type); therapists in cash-pay-only practice may not be NPI-registered, in which case NPI is unavailable as a disambiguator.
The Therapist Vetting Report covers identity, license type and status, state-board disciplinary history, specialty certifications, education, practice setting, insurance-panel participation surface, and federal exclusion status. Five use cases drive the report's framing:
Therapist resolution follows the canonical MentionFox vetter pattern: vetter-resolve-candidates → SubjectDisambiguation chooser → typed callback → handleConfirmSubject. NPI is the canonical identifier when available; when NPI is unavailable (cash-pay-only practice), name + state + license type drives the candidate set.
| Source | What it tells us | Class |
|---|---|---|
| CMS NPI Registry | Verified identity (when therapist bills insurance), primary taxonomy, practice address(es), enumeration date, NPI status, credential. | Federal-Primary |
| OIG LEIE | Federal exclusion from Medicare/Medicaid programs. Behavioral-health Medicaid billing fraud is a real signal; a positive match here is dispositive. | Federal-Primary |
| State LCSW boards (50 states + DC) | Licensed Clinical Social Worker license status, license number, renewal date, disciplinary actions of record. Each state has a different lookup URL. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| State MFT boards (50 states + DC) | Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist license status. Some states use the LMFT designation, others LMFC. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| State counseling boards (50 states + DC) | LPC / LPCC / LMHC / LCPC license status. Designation varies by state (LMHC in NY/MA/FL; LPC in TX/PA/etc; LPCC in CA/MN; LCPC in IL/MD). | Authoritative-Secondary |
| State psychology boards (50 states + DC) | Licensed Psychologist (PhD or PsyD) license status, license number, renewal date, disciplinary actions of record. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ASPPB | Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards — Credential Bank, Certificate of Professional Qualification (CPQ), license-mobility verification across states/provinces. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| AAMFT | American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy — Approved Supervisor designation, Clinical Fellow status. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| EMDRIA | EMDR International Association — EMDRIA-Certified Therapist and Approved Consultant directory. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABCT | Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies — Founders Award, Fellow status, certification programs. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABPN | American Board of Professional Neuropsychology — neuropsychology specialty board (distinct from ABPP). Some report subjects hold this credential. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABPP | American Board of Professional Psychology — board certification across 15 psychology specialties (clinical, counseling, school, neuropsych, forensic, etc.). | Authoritative-Secondary |
| Psychology Today directory | Self-reported practice profile (modality, populations, insurance accepted, fee). Useful as an existence-of-practice signal and modality-claim cross-check; not authoritative for license status. | Aggregator |
| Insurance-network rosters (Optum, BCBS, Aetna, Cigna) | Where publicly searchable, in-network status verification. Surfaced when the subject claims insurance acceptance. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| CourtListener | Free Law Project federal and state court records — civil malpractice case search bounded by strict defamation framing. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| PubMed E-utilities | Total publications in psychology/psychiatry/social-work journals (J Couns Psychol, J Marital Fam Ther, Psychother Res, etc.). Most clinical therapists publish little; section degrades to "consistent with clinical-practice focus" below 10 pubs. | Federal-Primary |
Each cited source falls into one of three classes, weighted differently when the synthesis evaluates evidence strength:
Every assertion in a Therapist Vetting Report is an atomic claim that links back to a specific verified URL. There are no synthesised summaries that float without citations. If the synthesis cannot point to a specific public source for a fact, the fact is replaced with the [insufficient public evidence as of {date}] tag. Examples of atomic claims and their canonical citation targets:
Each of the 11 report sections receives a confidence score from 0 to 100. Probabilistic claims within a section use the PHIA probability vocabulary. Bands are picked based on data density. When evidence is thin, the band defaults to "roughly even chance" with an explicit "[insufficient public evidence]" tag and the section receives an "unverified" flag. Triggers for the section-level "unverified" flag:
Therapist verification carries the highest defamation-risk profile of any vetter we operate — even more than physician or dentist — because mental-health practitioners face stigma carryover from any negative claim. The synthesis follows a strict cite-don't-characterize policy:
Generated last. Pulls verdict-relevant facts from each prior section: NPI status (when applicable), OIG result, license type and status, specialty certifications, and any HIGH-severity flags.
Verified-identity record from NPI Registry (when available) + state licensing board licensure status. Credentials (LCSW, LMFT, LPC, LMHC, PhD, PsyD), license number, license states.
Active license type(s). Practice setting (solo / group / community mental health / academic / hospital / telehealth platform). Modality and population focus from self-report.
The single highest-stakes section. Leads with OIG LEIE result. State board lookup URL surfaced for direct verification. Each state of claimed practice is cross-checked.
EMDRIA-Certified Therapist or Approved Consultant. AAMFT Clinical Fellow or Approved Supervisor. ABPP board certification (for psychologists). ABCT certifications. ABPN neuropsychology cert.
Degree institution (cross-referenced against accreditation lists: CSWE for social work, COAMFTE for MFT, CACREP for counseling, APA-accredited programs for psychology). Doctoral internship (when applicable, APA-accredited).
Practice locations from NPI record (when available). Group-practice rosters where the subject is publicly listed. Telehealth platform listings.
Five archetype-matched peers from the comparable_therapists_reference table (~30 seeded entries spanning 4 license types and 6 modality clusters). Composite scoring on license type, modality, population focus, and career stage.
Where publicly searchable, in-network status with major insurance plans (Optum, BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, United). Helps verify insurance acceptance claims on the practice profile.
CourtListener civil malpractice case search with behavioral-health-specific terms. Bounded by strong disclaimers; civil filings are litigation activity, not adjudicated wrongdoing.
JS-aggregated audit trail of every URL cited across the prior 10 sections, deduplicated and grouped by source class.
Source data is re-crawled on a per-source cadence calibrated to how often each source updates:
Stale-flag triggers: if a re-crawl fails three times consecutively, the section is flagged "stale (last verified YYYY-MM-DD)" and the section confidence score is capped at 60 until re-crawl succeeds.
Read top-to-bottom. The Executive Summary surfaces the verdict-relevant facts; the section-by-section detail backs each. Pay special attention to: (a) any HIGH-severity flag in the State Board Disciplinary History section, (b) any positive OIG LEIE match (dispositive signal), (c) any Identity-section unverified-flag (means therapist is cash-pay-only without NPI, OR disambiguation was not finalized), and (d) any specialty-cert mismatch (subject claims EMDR/IFS/AAMFT-Approved-Supervisor on practice profile but the corresponding directory does not list them). A clean report on all four signals is the typical pattern; flags require follow-up against the cited primary source.
If you are the subject of a report and believe a fact is wrong, email corrections@mentionfox.com with: (1) the report ID, (2) the specific atomic claim you contest, (3) a public URL that supports the correction. We respond within 3 business days. Confirmed errors are corrected in the report and a correction notice is added to the report's audit trail.
Therapist Snapshot: 25 credits ($10). Therapist Full Vetting Report: 200 credits ($80). Snapshots cover the Identity, License, and OIG sections only; Full Reports cover all 11 sections plus the Comparable Therapists peer-set. Pricing is denominated in credits because credit packs scale with use; one-off purchases are also available at the per-credit rate.
Every claim in a Therapist Vetting Report cites a public URL the reader can verify. Claims without citations do not appear — replaced with the [insufficient public evidence as of {date}] tag. Reports are auditable: a credentialing committee or referral-source reviewer can re-run the verification chain by hand from the citations alone.