Therapy Intake Form Templates and Best Practice Guide

Your therapy intake form is often the first real “conversation” a client has with your practice. Long before you meet, it shapes what they share, how safe they feel, and how much work you need to do to turn scattered details into a clear picture.

A good therapy intake form template does more than collect demographics. It prepares you clinically, protects you legally, helps your admin run smoothly, and sets the tone for your relationship with the client.

This guide walks through why intake matters, shares free therapy intake form templates you can adapt, and shows how to turn intake data into a smoother workflow – including how Emosapien can help you pre-fill and structure information before the first session.

Why a good intake form matters more than you think

Done well, intake can make your first session feel focused and grounded instead of rushed and repetitive. Done poorly, it can overwhelm clients, create extra admin, or leave gaps you have to scramble to fill later.

Your intake form quietly serves several roles at once:

  • Clinical
    It gives you an early sketch of the client’s story, symptoms, risk profile and strengths. You can start forming hypotheses, think about appropriate modalities, and prepare for safety planning if needed.
  • Legal and ethical
    Intake is often part of the legal record. It helps document consent, limits of confidentiality, your policies (cancellations, communication, emergencies), and key health information you’re expected to know.
  • Administrative
    It gathers the basics your practice needs to function: contact details, billing information, emergency contacts, insurance or funding data, and how the client found you.
  • Communication
    The tone and length of your intake form tell clients something about you. A clear, respectful form can help them feel safe and taken seriously. An overwhelming or intrusive form can raise anxiety before they even meet you.

How intake shapes the first session and treatment plan

Your intake form doesn’t replace a good first session, but it can make that session work harder for both of you.

A thoughtful intake form can help you:

  • Spend less time on basic fact-finding and more time building rapport
  • Notice early red flags around risk, substance use, medical issues or legal matters
  • Identify urgent goals versus long-term work
  • Start sketching a treatment plan that aligns with the client’s priorities

When intake is connected to your treatment planning process, you can move more smoothly from “why are you here?” to “what would you like to be different, and how will we track that?” If you use a resource like “Treatment plan templates and outcomes tracking examples,” you can build that bridge even more deliberately.

Free therapy intake form templates

You can use the templates below as starting points and adapt them to your context, policies and local regulations. They are not jurisdiction-specific, so you’ll still need to align them with your licensing board, insurer and privacy requirements.

Each section outline can be turned into an online form, a PDF, or embedded in your EHR.

Adult individual therapy intake form (download)

A typical adult individual therapy intake form template might include:

  • Basic information
    • Full name
    • Date of birth
    • Pronouns
    • Contact details (phone, email, address)
    • Emergency contact (name, relationship, phone)
  • Referral and reason for seeking therapy
    • How did you hear about the practice?
    • What brings you to therapy at this time? (open text)
    • How long have you been experiencing these concerns?
  • Current functioning and supports
    • Living situation (alone, with partner, with family, etc.)
    • Work or study status
    • Key supports (friends, family, community, faith, etc.)
  • Medical and mental health history
    • Current diagnoses (if known)
    • Past mental health treatment (therapy, hospitalizations, medications)
    • Current medical conditions
    • Current medications (name, dose, prescriber)
  • Substance use and risk
    • Alcohol and drug use (type, frequency)
    • History of self-harm or suicidal thoughts/attempts
    • History of violence, legal issues or safety concerns
  • Goals and preferences
    • What would you like to be different after working together?
    • Preferences for session format (in-person, telehealth, blended)
    • Any preferences around therapist identity or approach, if relevant
  • Consent and policies
    • Limits of confidentiality
    • Practice policies (cancellation, communication, late arrivals)
    • Consent to treatment and, if applicable, to telehealth

You can present these in a mix of checkboxes, short-answer questions and free-text fields to keep the form structured but still flexible.

Child and adolescent intake form (download)

Child and adolescent intake forms add layers of consent, caregivers and school context. A template might cover:

  • Client and caregiver details
    • Child’s name, date of birth, pronouns
    • Names and contact details of parents or guardians
    • Legal custody arrangements (if applicable)
    • Who will usually attend sessions
  • Presenting concerns
    • Main concerns (behavior, mood, anxiety, school, peer relationships, family conflict, etc.)
    • Onset and duration of difficulties
    • What prompted seeking help now (school contact, pediatrician, family events)?
  • Developmental and medical history
    • Pregnancy and birth history (if relevant)
    • Developmental milestones (speech, motor, social)
    • Past diagnoses (for example, ADHD, autism spectrum, learning difficulties)
    • Current medications and medical conditions
  • School and learning
    • Current school and grade
    • Academic performance and learning supports (IEP, 504, tutoring)
    • School behavior, attendance and suspensions/expulsions (if any)
  • Family context
    • Family structure and recent changes (moves, separations, losses)
    • Key strengths and stressors for the family
    • Cultural or religious factors the family would like you to be aware of
  • Risk and safety
    • Self-harm, suicidal ideation or attempts
    • Aggression, bullying (as target or perpetrator), running away
    • Child protection involvement, if any
  • Consent and communication
    • Consent from legal guardians
    • How information will be shared with caregivers, school, and other providers
    • Preferences for communication (who can be contacted, and how)

The tone here matters. Questions should feel respectful to both child and caregivers, with room to note strengths as well as concerns.

Couples and family therapy intake form (download)

For couples and family work, intake needs to hold multiple perspectives without taking sides from the outset. A template could include:

  • Participant details
    • Names, pronouns, ages of each person attending
    • Relationship descriptions (partners, parents, siblings, etc.)
    • Contact details for each adult participating
  • Presenting concerns
    • What brings you to couples/family therapy now?
    • How long have these issues been present?
    • What has already been tried to address them?
  • Relationship and family history
    • Duration of relationship(s), key milestones
    • Previous separations, reconciliations or major conflicts
    • Significant family events (moves, losses, health issues)
  • Individual mental health and risk
    • Brief mental health and substance use history for each adult
    • Any current safety concerns (emotional, physical, financial)
    • History of intimate partner violence (asked sensitively and safely)
  • Goals for therapy
    • What would each person like to be different?
    • What would improvement look like in day-to-day life?
    • What would make therapy feel successful for each participant?
  • Ground rules and consent
    • Confidentiality in couples/family work (including how you handle secrets)
    • Policies for individual sessions within a relational treatment
    • Consent to treatment from all adult participants

Relational work raises additional ethical and safety considerations. Your intake form should support, not replace, a thorough live assessment of risk and suitability for couples or family therapy.

If you offer telehealth, it often helps to have a short add-on form or section that covers:

  • Location and emergency planning
    • Usual location during telehealth sessions
    • Local emergency services details
    • Backup plan if the call drops or there is an emergency during session
  • Technology and privacy
    • Platform used and basic requirements
    • Client’s responsibilities for creating a private space (headphones, closed door, etc.)
    • How you handle interruptions or technical problems
  • Telehealth-specific consent
    • Benefits and limitations of telehealth
    • Security and privacy measures you use
    • Situations where you may recommend in-person care or referral

This add-on can be attached to your main intake form or used when a client transitions from in-person to telehealth.

What to include (and what to avoid) in your intake forms

More questions do not always equal better information. The goal is to gather what you genuinely need for safe, effective care and a functioning practice, while respecting the client’s time and privacy.

Core demographics and contact details

At minimum, your intake form should capture:

  • Full name and preferred name
  • Date of birth and pronouns
  • Contact details (phone, email, address)
  • Emergency contact (name, relationship, phone)
  • Insurance or funding details (if applicable)

You may also want to include optional questions about cultural background, language preferences and accessibility needs. These should be framed in a way that invites sharing without pressure.

Presenting issue, history, risk and medication

You want enough clinical information to prepare, without trying to do a full assessment on paper.

Consider including:

  • Short, open-ended question about the main concern
  • Duration and impact on daily functioning (work, school, relationships, sleep)
  • Brief mental health history (diagnoses, past therapy, hospitalizations)
  • Current and past medications, with prescriber where relevant
  • Substance use pattern (type, frequency)
  • Targeted risk questions (self-harm, suicidality, violence, legal issues, child safety)

Clear, straightforward wording is often better than long checklists. Clients can always expand in session.

Clients need to know what they are agreeing to, how their data will be used, and where the limits are.

Your intake form is one place to:

  • Explain the nature and purpose of therapy
  • Outline limits of confidentiality (harm to self/others, child or elder abuse, court orders, etc.)
  • Describe how you store and protect client information
  • Note how you use any digital tools (including AI), and what data they access
  • Provide links to your full privacy policy and terms, where appropriate

If you use AI in any part of your documentation or client engagement, it helps to be transparent. A resource like “Ethics, privacy and consent when using AI in mental health practice” can support you to shape clear, client-friendly language.

Avoiding overly intrusive or irrelevant questions

It can be tempting to ask “everything just in case,” but that can:

  • Overwhelm clients or retraumatize them before you’ve even met
  • Create records containing sensitive details you don’t actually need
  • Slow down your admin and review processes

A few questions to ask yourself for each item:

  • Do I genuinely need this information at intake, or can it wait?
  • Is this question clearly linked to safety, planning or care?
  • Is there a less intrusive way to ask this, or to leave it optional?

You can always gather more detail later when you’ve built rapport and have more context.

Digital intake workflows and automation

Many practices are moving away from clipboards and PDF attachments toward digital intake. Done well, digital intake can reduce admin, reduce data entry errors and make clients’ lives easier.

From PDF and clipboard to online forms

Common shifts include:

  • Turning paper or PDF forms into secure online forms clients can complete on a phone or laptop
  • Using e-signatures for consent instead of printing and scanning
  • Automatically populating your EHR or practice management system from form responses
  • Sending pre-session reminders and links so clients arrive prepared

The goal is to reduce friction. Clients shouldn’t have to repeat the same details across multiple forms, and you shouldn’t have to retype what they’ve already given you.

How intake data flows into notes and treatment plans

Intake is most powerful when it connects directly to your notes and treatment plans. For example:

  • Presenting issues and early goals can feed into your treatment plan template
  • Risk and medication information can appear in a quick-reference section of your notes
  • Strengths and supports can be pulled into case formulations and progress summaries

When you design or choose a therapy intake form template, it’s helpful to think ahead:

  • Which fields should map directly to progress notes or treatment plans?
  • What do you want visible at a glance during sessions?
  • What would you like to see summarized when you review a case months later?

Linking intake to tools like “Treatment plan templates and outcomes tracking examples” can turn a one-off form into the foundation of a more coherent, outcomes-focused workflow.

How Emosapien can pre-fill and structure information before the first session

Emosapien is designed to work alongside you from intake through to ongoing care, not just in the note-writing phase.

Around intake, Emosapien can help you:

  • Collect and structure intake data
    Capture client information through secure, digital forms that align with your preferred templates (adult, child, couples, telehealth add-ons).
  • Pre-fill key elements of notes and plans
    Use intake responses to pre-populate parts of your first progress note and draft treatment plan, so you’re not retyping demographics, presenting issues and basic history.
  • Highlight what matters clinically
    Surface risk indicators, medical red flags or themes in presenting concerns that you may want to explore early in your work together.
  • Keep privacy and consent central
    Ensure that any AI-assisted workflows respect client consent, clear data boundaries and your ethical obligations. Emosapien is built with clinical-grade privacy in mind and does not train global models on your client data by default.

By connecting intake directly to your documentation and decision-support tools, Emosapien can help you move from “paperwork before we start” to “a clear, living picture of this client’s needs and goals” that evolves over time.

A well-designed therapy intake form template can reduce friction for you and your clients, support safer and more effective care, and make the rest of your documentation easier.

You can:

  • Adapt the adult, child, couples/family and telehealth templates above to your context
  • Connect intake to clearer planning with “Treatment plan templates and outcomes tracking examples”
  • Explore how Emosapien’s “From Intake to Impact” features can help you collect, structure and use intake data in a way that fits your workflow

If you’d like to see what this looks like end to end, from intake forms to first notes to ongoing progress, you can explore our main features page or try Emosapien for Free.