Practitioners in Kuwait can no longer offer Reiki, crystal treatments, colour therapy or a long list of other alternative practices after the Ministry of Health ruled they lack any credible scientific footing.
The prohibition sits inside Ministerial Decision No. 225 of 2026, a broad set of rules covering how psychotherapy may be practised across both government and private facilities, along with the conditions for securing a professional licence. Officials frame the measure as a patient-protection effort.
At its core, the decision bars anyone working in the field from offering or advertising treatments that cannot be backed by proven scientific grounds. The banned list runs wide: energy and spiritual therapies, pranic healing, what the ministry terms false hypnosis, astral projection, cosmic healing, “star seeds,” treatments built around the law of attraction, body-language reading, and anything invoking chakras or auras.
Neurolinguistic programming falls under the ban as well, grouped with pseudotherapies, unsupported therapeutic claims, and relaxation or mental-guidance methods that have no scientific basis. Also off-limits are so-called psychological yoga and treatments claiming to work through sound vibrations. Life coaching and self-development sessions are permitted only when carried out within an authorised licensing structure.
On the licensing side, the rules lay down formal titles for the profession. The psychotherapy track recognises senior psychotherapist, psychotherapist and psychologist, while applied behaviour analysis carries its own set of titles: senior applied behaviour analyst, behaviour analyst and assistant analyst.
Anyone seeking a licence must have earned academic credentials from a recognised institution, and degrees obtained abroad require formal equivalency before they will be accepted. The ministry further stipulates that this coursework be completed through regular in-person attendance rather than remotely.
Beyond the classroom, candidates are required to finish supervised clinical training and to log a set number of face-to-face sessions conducted inside licensed healthcare settings — a condition that puts hands-on practice on equal footing with academic qualifications.
