I had a therapist for two years. She was very good at her job, both insightful and soothing and (for me as a 22-year-old living in London) very expensive, with our sessions costing £90 a week. Judging by the 57 historical Zoom email invites in my inbox, I can estimate that I spent over £5,000 on therapy over the course of two years. It is the best money I’ve ever spent. For others, though, those prospective costs can be daunting and, when coupled with the anxiety of spilling your entire mind into the hands of a stranger and fitting your sessions around their timetable, off-putting.
According to the UK therapy guide, the price of private therapy in the UK typically ranges from £40 to £100 per session. Everyone is different, but the average recommended course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (one of the most common forms of talking therapy, described as the “gold standard” of psychotherapy) is six to 20 sessions. That means someone starting an introductory course of CBT is looking at somewhere between £240 to £2,000, with Londoners likely on the higher end due to London’s innately higher pricing.
