Especially when you’re new to therapy, you might be wondering, “What’s a good price for a therapy session?”
Instead of saying “it depends” (it kind of does), in most areas of the country, people pay between $100 to $200 per session. If they’re using insurance, that number can be closer to $20 to $50 per session, but many therapists these days don’t take insurance for a number of reasons.
How much do therapists cost in Colorado?
For Denver specifically, the average cost of a therapy session is about $150. At My Denver Therapy, most of our therapists cost less than the local and national averages for therapy.
So if you’re paying more than $200 for a therapy session here in Denver, which is close to what people pay in a city like New York City or Los Angeles, you’ll want to make sure that person is the right fit for you, has specific training in therapy methods that apply to you, and that your time spent with them is worth paying significantly more for.
Why does therapy cost so much?
On the surface, it’s a very reasonable question. Even though we do our best to make therapy affordable by offering sliding scale payment options and partnerships with local churches and organizations, we know that therapy still isn’t cheap for many people.
While therapy itself appears to require very little equipment or overhead (it’s usually just a couple people talking in a room!), all of our therapists have a Master’s-level education in a therapy-related field, like marriage and family therapy, counseling, or social work.
Therapists like ours also take additional trainings to develop specialties to better serve their clients. Some of the trainings can cost thousands of dollars, and advanced-level trainings can be even more expensive for therapists. These trainings are an investment on the therapist’s part to provide you with a better therapy experience, even if the upfront costs can be very expensive on a therapist’s part.
Because therapists work around many clients’ availability, they’re also frequently unable to work a traditional 40-hour work week as a result, and much of the work they do goes beyond their working hours to support their clients. While each session might be 50 minutes, the amount of time that a therapist might spend on a client, including developing treatment plans, communication, and even helping with paperwork, could go far beyond time spent in a session.
We know your time is valuable, but we know that your money is valuable too. As a result, we invest heavily in ourselves with trainings, online platforms, and equipment—therapy-related equipment can cost much more than you’d ever expect—so that you can feel good about the money and time you’re spending in therapy.
