TLDR: One answer - if you're in a decent-sized city - is to look for people who have published on the particular issue you're having. My other piece of advice i

TLDR: One answer - if you're in a decent-sized city - is to look for people who have published on the particular issue you're having. My other piece of advice is : always set a time limit. This is a difficult issue, for a few reasons. The stigma surrounding mental health means no-one (to a first order approximation) goes around raving about the really great therapist they found. This has a couple of consequences. First, therapists don't specialise. They need to get clients, so they list themselves as being able to treat every mental health condition on the professional registers. Hence, look for people who publish. Second, it's not hard for a mediocre-to-bad therapist to keep going and earn a living. There are no reputational consequences. Even the best therapists wont' succeed all the time, some people would recovered anyway, so it's easy for them to kid themselves that they are better than they are. The other problem with mental health is that the incentives are backwards. Mental health professionals are paid by the hour, whether they help or not, and don't have any incentive to think about whether you would be better off trying someone else after all this time. And if you are depressed it's hard to get up the will to think about changing your therapist, so it's easy to let things drag on in the hope that they eventually work, wasting huge amounts of money and time. Hence, set a date at which, come what may, you will either stop or try a different one. Sooner than they want.