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Therapy Intake Questions: 80+ Examples by Domain (with Modality and Compliance Notes)

Marcus Reilly · Practice Operations Editor · April 29, 2026 · 12 min read

Outline

A thoughtful intake question saves three sessions later. The wrong question, or the right one asked badly, costs a clinician half of session two re-mapping a story the client thought they had already told.

Most “intake form” examples online are list-dumps: fifty questions in a row, no rationale, no domain structure. A question without a reason behind it sits on the form long after its clinical usefulness has gone.

This guide organises 80-plus therapy intake questions by clinical domain, explains what each domain opens up, and flags where a written form should hand off to a live clinician conversation. It is written for therapists, psychologists, counsellors, and clinical social workers. Pair it with the therapy intake form templates and best practice guide when you are ready to drop these into a live form.

What good therapy intake questions actually do

A useful set of therapy intake questions does five things at once, and a question that does none of them is one to cut.

First, establish the presenting problem and severity in the client’s own language, not yours. Second, screen for risk early enough to plan a safer first session. Third, capture treatment-relevant history (previous therapy, medications, key medical conditions) so the clinician walks in with context rather than assembling it on the fly. Fourth, record client-stated goals before clinician hypotheses anchor them. Fifth, begin the working alliance: a respectful, well-sequenced intake tells the client they are about to meet a practitioner who takes their time seriously.

Anything else is administrative scaffolding. Useful, but not what makes the intake clinically alive. The boundary between form data and the broader written record is covered in our clinical documentation guide.

Domain 1: Presenting concern and clinical history

The spine of the intake. These questions decide what you spend the first session on. Aim for open-text where possible; checkbox-only versions consistently produce thinner clinical material.

Question bank Presenting concern and clinical history

What brought you to therapy at this particular time?
In your own words, what would you most like to work on?
How long have these difficulties been present?
When were they at their worst, and what was happening then?
What, if anything, makes them better? What makes them worse?
Have you previously seen a therapist, psychologist, or counsellor? When, and for how long?
What was helpful about that experience? What was unhelpful?
Have you ever been given a mental health diagnosis? By whom?
Have you ever been hospitalised for a mental health concern, voluntarily or involuntarily?
Are there particular situations, people, or times of day when the difficulties spike?
What have you already tried (self-help, medication, lifestyle changes, religious or spiritual practice)?
Why now, rather than six months ago or six months from now?
What would tell you, three months in, that things were moving in the right direction?
Is there anything you want me to know before we meet, that you would prefer to write rather than say?

The last two earn their place. “Why now” often surfaces the actual trigger (a relationship rupture, a workplace incident, a recent loss) that the presenting concern was built around. The final question is a permission slip for material a client is not yet ready to speak aloud.

Domain 2: Symptom screening and current functioning

These questions sketch the current clinical picture across mood, anxiety, sleep, appetite, substance use, and daily functioning. They are not a substitute for formal screening tools (PHQ-9, GAD-7, AUDIT-C, K10) but tell you which of those instruments are worth administering.

Question bank Symptom screening and current functioning

How would you describe your mood over the past two weeks?
Have you noticed changes in your energy or motivation?
How is your sleep at the moment (time to fall asleep, night waking, total hours, refreshing or not)?
How is your appetite, and has your weight changed recently?
Are there activities you used to enjoy that you no longer enjoy?
How would you describe your level of anxiety or worry day-to-day?
Are there specific situations that make you anxious enough to avoid them?
Do you experience panic attacks? If so, how often and what tends to trigger them?
How is your concentration? Are you finding it harder to focus than usual?
Are you using alcohol or other substances? How often and roughly how much?
How is your work or study functioning at the moment?
How are your close relationships functioning?
Do you feel safe at home? Safe at work?
On a scale of zero to ten, how distressed have you felt in the past week?
Are there physical symptoms (chest tightness, GI distress, headaches) that you suspect may be linked to stress?

For Australian clinicians, the K10 maps cleanly onto Better Access reporting. For US clinicians, PHQ-9 plus GAD-7 plus a brief substance screen covers most general-practice intakes.

Domain 3: Risk and safety screening

These therapy intake questions belong in the clinician interview, not on a self-administered web form. Asking a client to tick a box about suicidal ideation without a clinician on the other end is poor practice and, depending on jurisdiction, a defensible-care problem. Use a Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) style sequence in person, and treat the written form as a prompt to ask, not a substitute for asking.

Question bank Risk and safety screening (clinician-interview only)

In the past month, have you wished you were dead or wished you could go to sleep and not wake up?
In the past month, have you had any thoughts of killing yourself?
If yes, have you thought about how you might do it?
Have you started to work out or worked out the details of how to do it? Do you intend to act on it?
Have you done anything, started to do anything, or prepared to do anything to end your life in the past three months?
Have you ever attempted to end your life? When, and what happened afterwards?
Do you currently engage in any form of self-harm (cutting, burning, hitting yourself)?
Have you had thoughts of harming someone else? Is there a specific person?
Do you currently feel safe in your relationships at home? Has anyone hurt you, threatened you, or controlled what you do?
Are there children in your care, and do you have any concerns about their safety?

Two notes. The IPV and child-safety questions sit in this domain on purpose: they are risk questions, not “family” questions, and the framing matters. Any “yes” on the suicide sequence triggers a documented safety plan before the client leaves the intake, not at the next session.

Domain 4: Family and developmental history

This domain often gets the most padding on generic intake forms and the least clinical use. Keep it focused on what you will work with.

The last item is often skipped on Western-templated forms and is one of the most clinically useful when working with clients from non-dominant cultural backgrounds.

Domain 5: Medical, medication, and substance use history

Where therapy intake questions earn their keep with referring GPs and psychiatrists. A complete medication and medical list at intake prevents a lot of cross-disciplinary confusion later.

Question bank Medical, medication, and substance use history

Do you have any current medical conditions? Please list them.
What medications are you currently taking, including doses?
Who prescribes them, and when did you last see that prescriber?
Have you taken psychiatric medication in the past? What worked, what did not?
Do you have any allergies or adverse reactions to medication?
Do you have a history of head injury, seizure, or neurological condition?
Do you have any condition that affects your sleep (sleep apnoea, restless legs, chronic pain)?
How much alcohol do you drink in a typical week?
Do you use cannabis, stimulants, opioids, benzodiazepines, or other substances? How often?
Are you in recovery from a substance use disorder? If so, how long, and what supports are you using?

The sleep-disordered breathing question matters more than its placement suggests. Untreated obstructive sleep apnoea presents as treatment-resistant depression often enough that asking once at intake is worth the line.

Domain 6: Trauma history (sensitively framed)

Trauma history rarely surfaces fully at intake. Most of what a clinician will work with comes out in session two, three, or later, after the client has decided the room is safe enough. The form-collected version should be brief, consent-led, and clearly optional.

Frame the section with a single sentence on the form: “You are welcome to skip any of these questions and raise them in person if you would prefer.” That sentence is doing clinical work.

Domain 7: Strengths, supports, and goals

The strengths domain is most often missing from inherited intake forms, and the one that shifts the tone of the first session. A client who has just spent twenty minutes describing what is broken responds differently when the next questions ask what is working.

The “not willing to change” question is unfashionable and clinically useful. It surfaces the religious commitment, the relationship the client will not leave, or the substance they are not ready to stop, before the clinician spends weeks treatment-planning around an assumption.

The administrative spine. Capture it cleanly and the rest of the intake breathes.

The final item is the one most practices have not yet updated. If your workflow includes an AI scribe, an AI co-therapist, or any tool that processes session audio or transcripts, the client deserves a specific, named consent.

Modality-specific questions worth adding

Once the eight domains are covered, modality adds a small number of focused questions rather than another full set. Add only what you will use in the room.

For CBT, add a question on automatic thoughts: “When you are at your most distressed, what is the thought running through your mind?” That single question gives you a starting cognition for session one.

For ACT, ask about values: “If the difficulties were less in the way, what would you spend more of your time doing?”

For DBT, ask about emotion regulation: “When emotions get very intense, what do you currently do to bring them down? What works, what backfires?”

For IFS, the language shifts. Avoid asking about “parts” before the client knows the model. A safer intake version: “Are there ways you sometimes feel pulled in different directions inside yourself?”

For EMDR, intake is too early for a target list. One question is enough: “Are there specific memories or events you suspect we may need to work with directly?”

Two compliance frames matter for most readers of this site. US-based therapists work under HIPAA and state-level mental health record statutes. AU-based clinicians work under the Privacy Act, the AHPRA Code of Conduct, and Better Access record-keeping requirements.

What needs to be captured in writing is similar across both: documented informed consent covering treatment, limits of confidentiality, fees, cancellation, and any third-party tools that process protected health information; a clearly identified emergency contact and named primary care provider; and a record of release-of-information consents and what they cover. Our note on HIPAA-compliant therapy notes walks through the documentation side.

What needs separate, specific consent is shorter: session recording, transcription, AI processing of session content, communication with third parties (GP, psychiatrist, school, employer), and any disclosure beyond mandated reporting. A blanket “I consent to the use of technology” line does not meet the bar in either jurisdiction. Confidentiality practice across the broader workflow is covered in our piece on maintaining client confidentiality in mental health.

Putting these into your intake form

You are not going to use all 80 of these questions on every form. The point of organising them by domain is that you can choose deliberately which ones serve your population. An adult individual practice working with anxiety and depression needs depth in domains 1, 2, 3, and 7. A trauma-specialist practice will weight domain 6 differently. A child or adolescent practice replaces large parts of domain 1 with parent-report and developmental history.

Pick fewer questions than you think you need, sequence them so the easier domains come first, and leave space for the answer that does not fit any of your prompts. When you are ready to assemble the form, the therapy intake form templates and best practice guide offers four ready-to-adapt templates (adult, couples, child, telehealth) with these questions already mapped in.

A final test: read the draft form back as if you were a client filling it out at 11pm on the Sunday before your first session. If it reads as cold or interrogative, the clinical signal will suffer regardless of how thorough the questions are.

Where Emosapien fits

Emosapien’s Insight Agent reads across the intake and the first three sessions, surfacing themes that recur and the ones a client raised once and did not return to. The clinical effect: the second intake question becomes the actual conversation rather than another form-fill, because the clinician walks in with a structured view of what was said in writing and what came out loud. Try the Insight Agent on a session of your own, or read more on our AI clinical notes page.