David Epston (born 30 August 1944) is a New Zealand therapist, co-director of the Family Therapy Centre in Auckland, New Zealand, Visiting Professor at the John F. Kennedy University, an honorary clinical lecturer in the Department of Social Work, University of Melbourne, and an affiliate faculty member in the Ph.D program in Couple and Family Therapy at North Dakota State University. Epston and his late friend and colleague Michael White are known as originators of narrative therapy.

His best known publications are White and Epston(1990), Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends; Freeman, Epston and Lobovits(1997), Playful Approaches to Serious Problems: Narrative Therapy with Children and their Families and Maisel, Epston and Borden(2004), Biting The Hand That Starves You: Inspiring Resistance to Anorexia/Bulimia, Marsten, Epston and Markham(2016), Narrative Therapy in Wonderland: Connecting with Children’s Imaginative Know-how, and NiaNia, Bush and Epston(2017), Collaborative and Indigenous Mental Health Therapy: Taitaohono: Stories of Maori Healing and Psychiatry along with other collections of papers and book chapters.

He has been awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters (1996) and a ‘distinguished contribution to family therapy theory and practice’ from the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy(2002) and the American Family Therapy Academy(2007).