What counselling costs, and what you are paying for

Cost is the question people search for and then feel slightly awkward asking directly. It is a practical question and it deserves a practical answer.

What a session costs here

A session is 50 minutes, on Google Meet, in English or Hindi. The fee is Rs 1,000.

There is no joining fee, no package you have to commit to, and no charge for the short exchange of messages it takes to find a time. If you need to move an appointment, 24 hours notice is all I ask.

Why the range out there is so wide

Search around and you will see anything from a few hundred rupees to several thousand for what looks like the same hour. The spread is real and it comes from a few things.

• Qualification. The different mental health professions train for very different lengths of time and do different work, and the fees follow that
• Setting. A hospital department or a large platform carries overheads that an individual practice does not
• Experience. Someone twenty years in charges differently from someone starting out, and both can be the right choice
• Location. In-person practices in metros carry rent, and that sits inside the fee whether or not it is itemised

A higher fee is not a promise of a better hour, and a lower one is not a warning. What matters more is whether the person is the right sort of help for the thing you are bringing.

What you are actually paying for

This is the part that is rarely spelled out. The fee is not only the 50 minutes you are in the room.

It covers the time itself, which is yours and is not shared with anyone else. It covers the preparation before it and the notes afterwards, so the next session picks up rather than restarts. And it covers the fact that the hour is held for you, which is what makes it possible to plan around.

It does not buy a diagnosis, a report, or a specific outcome by a specific date. Anyone selling any of those at a fixed price is selling something counselling cannot deliver.

The figure that actually matters

Per session cost is the number people compare, but it is not the number that decides what this costs you. That is the per session fee multiplied by how many sessions you end up having, and the two do not move together.

A cheaper hour with someone who is not the right sort of help for your situation can run longer than a more expensive hour with someone who is. That is not an argument for paying more. It is an argument for asking what someone actually works with before you start, rather than sorting your options by price.

For a specific difficulty, something in the region of six to twelve sessions is common. That gives you a more useful sum to think about than the headline figure.

Packages, and why I do not sell them

You will come across prepaid bundles: buy six sessions, get a discount. They are not automatically a bad deal, but they change the incentives in a way worth noticing.

Paying session by session means you can stop the moment it stops being useful, without losing money and without a conversation about it. It also means I have to be worth booking again each time, which seems like the right pressure to be under.

So there is no package here. You book one session, and then you decide.

A note on insurance

Health insurance in India has begun covering mental health treatment, but in practice cover is usually tied to hospitalisation or to treatment by a psychiatrist rather than to counselling sessions. Assume counselling is out of pocket unless your policy says otherwise in writing, and check with your insurer rather than with me.

What to check before you pay anyone

• What exactly is their qualification, and will they say it plainly when asked
• How long is a session, and is that the time you actually get
• What is the cancellation and rescheduling policy
• Are you committing to a package, or paying session by session
• What happens to your notes, and who else can see anything

None of these are rude questions. Any practitioner worth the fee will answer them without getting defensive, and the ones who bristle have told you something useful for free.

One more worth adding, because people rarely think to ask it: what happens if you miss a session or need to move it at short notice. Policies vary a great deal and it is much better to know before it happens on a bad week than after.

If cost is the thing stopping you

It is worth saying that there are free routes, and using one is not a lesser choice. Tele MANAS, the government mental health helpline, is free and available at any hour on 14416. Many colleges and workplaces have counselling that people never find out about. If money is the obstacle, those are real options rather than consolation prizes.

And if what is stopping you is not the money but the sense that your difficulty is not big enough to spend anything on, that is worth noticing. There is no threshold you have to cross to deserve an hour.

If you want to start

You can message and ask anything above before booking anything, including whether what you are dealing with is something individual counselling suits. If you are wondering how long this goes on for as much as what it costs per session, that question has its own answer.