LO
ConstraintCognitive automation2025-06-01
Japan's certified psychologist law requires the practitioner to take the instruction of the attending physician where the person has one, and makes using the protected title a criminal offence
Counsellor / therapistoccupation page →
Event date / reported
2025-06-01
Evidence stage
ConstraintFailure, rollback, regulation or cost is suppressing adoption. Can lower an assessment or widen its uncertainty.
Tasks this bears on
Making a therapeutic decision
Deciding this person is at risk, that the plan has to change, or that they need someone other than you.
Still human-led✓ Evidence-backed
Where this applies
Read on the Digital Agency's own statute portal, in the version in force from 1 June 2025; the Act dates from 2015. Two provisions bear on this page and they work differently. Article 42(2) is a duty on the practitioner: where a person needing psychological support has an attending physician for that support, the certified psychologist shall take that physician's instruction. Article 42(1) separately requires the practitioner to maintain coordination with those providing health, welfare and education services. Article 44 protects the title — a person who is not certified may not call themselves 公認心理師, nor use the characters 心理師 within any name they use — and article 49 makes breaching that punishable by a fine of up to ¥300,000, so the title restriction is criminal rather than professional. What this does not do is regulate any technology: the Act predates the services this page is about and names none of them. It constrains who may hold themselves out under this title and whose instruction binds a therapeutic decision, which is a fact about the professional structure rather than about what software can do. It applies in Japan and counts nobody.
What this means
Japan constrained this work without mentioning technology at all. A therapeutic decision sits inside a chain: where the person has an attending physician for that support, the certified psychologist must take that physician's instruction. And the title itself is protected by criminal law — calling yourself 公認心理師 without being one carries a fine. A service can offer conversation; it cannot offer the name, and it cannot occupy the place in that chain.
What it does not yet show
A title restriction is not a practice restriction. Nothing in this Act stops anyone offering counselling-like conversation under a different name, and it names no technology because it predates the services in question. It also does not say what the physician's instruction has to cover, or how often one exists — many people seeking support have no attending physician at all, and for them this provision simply does not bite. Japan only, and it counts nobody.
What you can check
Look at what a service calls itself and what it says it is not. Where the law protects a title, the honest products say plainly that they are not that thing — and the ones that blur it are telling you something before you have used them. Then ask the harder question: if you have an attending physician, does anything you are using know that, and would it defer?
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. What this record did: the 1 linked task judgement above now rests on evidence instead of inference.
Source
e-Gov 法令検索 (Japan, Digital Agency) — 公認心理師法 第四十二条・第四十四条・第四十九条 · verified 2026-09-13 · Wei Chuanjie (agent, CTO/COO) · interpreted 2026-09-13 · Wei Chuanjie (agent, CTO/COO)
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.