\n\n\n\n
A close look at the numbers: The cost of GGZ and private therapy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Netherlands, the Dutch Healthcare Authority (Nederlandse Zorgautoriteit, NZa) sets the maximum rate that may be charged for mental health care. NZa tariffs set the market rate, and they are the official reference point for all billing within the GGZ (Dutch Mental Healthcare). These rates can be found at the Zorgprestatiemodel<\/a><\/em>. To give you an idea, the NZa rate of a 45-minute session with a GZ-psycholoo<\/em>g is \u20ac149,82 (Code CO0497), and a 60-minute session with a psychotherapeut <\/em>is \u20ac205,96 (Code CO0635).<\/p>\n\n\n\n How much do I pay if I go to the GGZ?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n How much you pay depends on what type of contract your GGZ healthcare provider has with your insurance. In every case, you will need to pay the mandatory deductible (the “eigen risico”<\/em>, which is \u20ac385 per calendar year) if you haven’t reached it yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dutch insurers work with two types of healthcare providers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n How much do I pay if I go to an independent therapist?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The basic Dutch health insurance (basisverzekering)<\/em> does not cover the costs of therapy outside of the GGZ. Unless you have an international or additional private insurance that covers private therapy, you need to pay everything out of pocket. In the Netherlands, individual private therapy typically costs between \u20ac70 to \u20ac120 for a 50-60 minute session. That means every month you’d be paying between \u20ac240 and \u20ac480 for weekly therapy, or between 140\u20ac and \u20ac240 for biweekly therapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Understandably so, many people can’t start therapy because it falls outside of their budget, or they might come every two or three weeks. Biweekly therapy has become so common that I almost forgot that weekly therapy has been the standard frequency for years, especially in the first weeks of therapy. In fact, in some psychotherapeutic approaches, such as psychoanalysis, it is normal to go multiple times per week. In my experience, meeting weekly creates a sense of continuity, and it allows us to build a connection and work through therapeutic material faster. When a long time passes between sessions, therapy may become something fleeting in your life, rather than part of it. It is a shame that regular therapy has become a luxury, only feasible for those who can afford it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is private therapy expensive?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n From my perspective, there are two main reasons why private therapy rates are high. First, a high fee is necessary to sustain a private practice and make a living as a therapist. Besides the many business expenses that come with being self-employed, we also need to account for potential sick leaves, inconsistent referrals, unpaid cancellations, our holidays, clients’ holidays, retirement… That is, all the expenses that are typically covered by an employer, and all the employment rights a contract secures for you. Second, having low rates could devalue the profession. If therapy fees are too low, people may perceive psychotherapy as less valuable, unimportant, or amateurish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keeping a private practice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Netherlands, after graduating from your university, you can work as a basispsycholoog<\/em> in a GGZ practice (very limited vacancies for non-Dutch speakers), get hired by an independent\/private practice, or become self-employed and start your own. I had never contemplated the path of becoming a freelancer until that was the main (if not only) opportunity that I encountered on my path to becoming a therapist. When you are self-employed, you’re not just a therapist, you also have to manage a business and cover all necessary expenses yourself. To put it in perspective, here\u2019s a summary of my business expenses: NIP membership, office rent, office supplies, supervision, my own therapy, courses and trainings, marketing, business insurance and complaints committee, business phone number, business bank account, tax accountant, and taxes. With all that in mind, something I really value about working as an independent therapist is that there is no intermediary between the patient\/client and me. No boss profiting from the work of employees, no insurance company adding layers of bureaucracy while dictating the terms, and no profit-driven platform making millions<\/a> by advertising therapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The value of therapy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The value of therapy is not easily translated into numbers. How do you quantify care and attention? How much is someone’s time and presence worth? There’s a tendency to undervalue the helping professions. Psychotherapy, like care work in general, involves a lot of invisible labour: Knowing when to speak and when to stay silent, paying attention to their body language, picking up on what is left unsaid, noticing how you are feeling in response to what is happening in the room, reflecting on the process in between sessions… You cannot see this from the outside, but a great deal is happening inside the therapist’s mind from the beginning of the session till the end. The visible work is equally valuable. Where else would we find a relationship in which someone is consistently there for us without us ever needing to reciprocate the help?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike other professions, the process and result of therapy are not perfectly measurable or tangible. Sometimes we only see the fruit of the therapeutic work many months after the first session. As therapists, we ask people who come to see us to look inward and go to a place within themselves that might resurface very painful feelings, with the purpose of healing an invisible wound that we don’t know when it will scar over. The value of therapy doesn’t lie in results or quick solutions, but in having a compassionate witness to all parts of yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do self-employed therapists set their own rates?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the absence of a clear way to quantify the worth of therapy, therapists look to other concrete markers to choose their own rates: market rate (how is therapy priced in our area), official guidelines (NZa tariffs in the Netherlands), how much did it cost us to become a therapist (university education and post-Master’s trainings), and how much does it cost us to maintain our practice. When you plug all of these numbers into a calculator, the number you get will inevitably be high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NZa rates are official guidelines determining the maximum fee healthcare professionals can charge. I believe it would also be necessary to have a minimum recommended fee set by a professional institution, as they do in Argentina, for example, where psychology associations set a “minimum ethical fee”<\/a><\/em> to protect therapists and the profession from inflation. Having official parameters of what the minimum and maximum rates are for mental healthcare would not only help self-employed psychologists set their own rates, but it would also help maintain professional dignity and ensure therapists earn enough to afford professional and personal costs. Most importantly, it would help create a shared understanding of what therapy is worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Final thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Money typically signifies safety. In our current social context, with living costs and unemployment on the rise, many people do not feel financially stable enough to pay for therapy out of pocket. The solution is not for self-employed therapists to lower their rates. If we did so, we would not be able to invest in our professional development or cover the necessary business costs, nor would we be able to make a living. As long as personal and professional costs remain high, therapist cannot afford to lower their fees. Paradoxically, private therapy is becoming unaffordable on both sides. Many people who need therapy can’t afford it, and many therapists who want to continue their training or invest in their private practice can’t afford to either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The road to financial safety is a long journey for many therapists. Rising expenses aren’t always accompanied by rising income, an income that is tied to the number of sessions we can realistically have per week. Because of this, a lot of therapists look for other ways to increase their earnings without proportionally increasing their hours, such as creating courses and workshops, writing books, producing podcasts, building a social media presence… Sometimes this is done out of a genuine desire in such ventures, and sometimes it is born out of the necessity of starting a side project that will provide more financial stability. When I became self-employed, I did so because I wanted to be a therapist. Everything related to business and marketing was completely foreign and new to me. After all, I didn’t study psychology to become an entrepreneur. What I have learned from my own experience and that of other therapists is that some therapists can afford to make a living just from therapy sessions, and some cannot. Which group you’re in depends on many factors, such as living costs in your city, whether you can count on other financial support (family or partner), and whether you had financial security and stable living circumstances before going freelance (such as already owning a house or having savings).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I believe the gap between the need for therapy and its inaccessibility reflects a crack in the structure of the mental healthcare system. One that affects both clients and therapists. It is not a perfect design. How could it be, when psychotherapy is still a very young discipline, less than 150 years old. I hope that one day, private therapy will be within the reach of anyone who wants to start. I hope that people who seek insurance-covered therapy do not have to wait for months, and that their treatment is not cut short. I hope that therapists who want to work in public healthcare can enter the system in the first place. I hope that therapists who want to start their own private practice can live from it. I hope that every therapist can make a good living without risking burnout or their integrity. I hope that one day I’ll see in a film a therapist I can relate to. And I hope the value of therapy doesn’t get lost within the imperfect system in which it currently exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In case you’re wondering…<\/p>\n\n\n Why aren’t there more international therapists in the GGZ?<\/p>\n\t\t\t Even if the Netherlands actively pursued internationalisation by offering many Master’s degrees in Clinical Psychology fully taught in English, it is hard to get into the Dutch mental healthcare system without a B2+ in Dutch. This limits the number of paths available to non-Dutch-speaking therapists when entering the GGZ. Hence why most international therapists work privately. That being said, there are some ways to get into the GGZ:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00bfQu\u00e9 opciones tengo si no me lo puedo permitir?<\/p>\n\t\t\t Dagen Efter \/ The Day After <\/em>by Mamma Andersson, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have thought about the price of therapy since before becoming a psychologist. I have reflected, read, and talked about it from the perspective of someone who has sat on both sides of the therapy room. Now that I have been self-employed for over three years, I understand why the average fee in the Netherlands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychotherapy"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/therapyeva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gallerimagnuskarlsson-mamma-andersson-dagen-efter-the-day-after-2020-21.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Eva","author_link":"https:\/\/therapyeva.com\/es\/author\/eva\/"},"yoast_head":"\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/therapyeva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gallerimagnuskarlsson-mamma-andersson-dagen-efter-the-day-after-2020-21.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n