Will AI replace Marriage and Family Therapists?
AI reaches some of this job’s work, but most of it stays with people.
26/100
Moderate exposure
More exposed to AI than 43% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 36% of the work
What the job involves
Diagnose and treat mental and emotional disorders, whether cognitive, affective, or behavioral, within the context of marriage and family systems. Apply psychotherapeutic and family systems theories and techniques in the delivery of services to individuals, couples, and families for the purpose of treating such diagnosed nervous and mental disorders.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(6)
- Ask questions that will help clients identify their feelings and behaviors.
- Maintain case files that include activities, progress notes, evaluations, and recommendations.
- Confer with clients to develop plans for posttreatment activities.
- Provide instructions to clients on how to obtain help with legal, financial, and other personal issues.
- Gather information from doctors, schools, social workers, juvenile counselors, law enforcement personnel, and others to make recommendations to courts for resolution of child custody or visitation disputes.
and 1 more
Out of reach(10)
- Encourage individuals and family members to develop and use skills and strategies for confronting their problems in a constructive manner.
- Develop and implement individualized treatment plans addressing family relationship problems, destructive patterns of behavior, and other personal issues.
- Counsel clients on concerns, such as unsatisfactory relationships, divorce and separation, child rearing, home management, or financial difficulties.
- Determine whether clients should be counseled or referred to other specialists in such fields as medicine, psychiatry, or legal aid.
- Collect information about clients, using techniques such as testing, interviewing, discussion, or observation.
and 5 more
Also called
Family Therapist · Family Counselor · Clinical Therapist · LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) · Marriage and Family Counselor · Therapist · Child and Family Counselor · LMFT
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics