What therapy costs in Karachi, and why it varies
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There is no single price for therapy in Karachi. What you pay depends on the psychologist's experience, on whether you are booking therapy or a formal assessment, and on how long the session runs. A reputable practice tells you the fee before you pay.
Why nobody publishes one number
You have probably searched for a figure and found either nothing or something suspiciously round. That is not evasion, or not only evasion. It is that "therapy" is not one product.
A 50-minute session with a psychologist three years into practice and a full psychological assessment producing a written report are different pieces of work, take different amounts of clinician time, and cost different amounts. Averaging them produces a number that is wrong for everybody who reads it — too high for one person, too low for another, and misleading for both.
What is worth knowing is not a figure but the structure: what moves the price, what you are buying, and at what point in the process you are told. Those three are stable, and once you know them you can price any practice in the city, including this one.
The three things that actually move the fee
Who you see. This is the largest single factor almost everywhere. A clinician with twenty years and several thousand supervised clinical hours does not cost the same as one three years in, and should not. At PHC, experience across the team ranges from three to twenty-four years. Note what this does not mean: the most experienced person is not automatically the right person for you, and a good practice matches you on speciality and clinical fit rather than selling you seniority you do not need.
What you are booking. Therapy and assessment are priced separately because they are separate work. A therapy session is 50 minutes of clinician time. A psychological assessment is an initial session, then administration of standardised tests, then scoring and interpretation, then a written report — several hours, most of them after you have gone home. Group programmes are different again.
How long it runs. A standard session at PHC is 50 minutes. If it runs past that and the psychologist has the time, you can extend by an hour at an extra fee, and you are told what that is before it happens. Minor overruns of one to five minutes are not charged.
The cost people do not see coming: assessments
This is where most of the confusion in Karachi sits, so it is worth being blunt about it.
If you ring a practice and ask what "an assessment" costs, a straight answer is not always possible, and that can be legitimate rather than a dodge. Which tests are warranted is a clinical decision, and it is made in the first session, not before it. A child brought in for reading difficulty might need a learning and achievement assessment, or that plus an IQ assessment, or a neurodevelopmental assessment instead. Those are different amounts of work.
At PHC the sequence is deliberately that way round: the initial session decides what is clinically warranted, and you are not given tests you do not need. The practical consequence for your budget is that the right moment to ask what the whole assessment will cost is at the end of that first session — by then the answer exists, and you will have it before anything further is booked or paid for.
What you are actually paying for
Worth spelling out, because "an hour of talking" undersells it and people do quietly think it.
You are paying for the training — a postgraduate clinical qualification, then a long supervised period seeing real patients. At PHC the minimum is a postgraduate qualification in clinical psychology and over 800 supervised clinical hours, and several clinicians hold several thousand. You are paying for the preparation and the notes, which happen outside the session. Where there is an assessment, you are paying for the instruments, the scoring and the report, most of which is unbilled-looking work you never see. And you are paying for the fact that the person can tell you when the problem is not theirs to solve.
Seven questions worth asking any practice before you pay
These work anywhere, not only here.
- What is the fee for my session, and when will you tell me? The answer should be a number, before payment, every time.
- Does the fee change depending on which psychologist I see? Usually yes. Ask what yours is, not what the lowest is.
- If I need an assessment, when will I know the total? "After the first session" is a good answer. "It depends" with nothing after it is not.
- Is the written report included, or charged separately? Ask before the assessment, not after.
- How long is a session, and what happens if it runs over?
- When do I pay, and what are the accepted methods?
- What happens if I need to cancel or move an appointment? Ask this one before you pay anything, because advance payment is common.
What PHC does about this
PHC publishes what a session and an assessment cost, and tells you the fee that applies to you before you pay, always.
The sequence is the same for everybody. You send your enquiry. We come back with a psychologist, a time and a fee. You agree to all three or to none of them, and nothing is charged before that point. A booking payment of half the fee is due at least 24 hours before the appointment, in cash or by bank transfer, and that is what holds the slot; the rest is paid after the session. If you cancel or move the appointment less than 24 hours before it, the booking payment is not refunded. If your psychologist moves it, it is refunded on request or carried to your next session.
If the fee is not what you expected, say so at that point. It costs you nothing to walk away there, and we would far rather you asked. If cost is the thing stopping you, say that when you first get in touch — if what you need is beyond what you can manage with us, we will say so plainly and point you elsewhere rather than let you start something you cannot continue.
How fees work at PHC, including payment and what to do if you need to change an appointment, is set out in full on the fees page.
Speaking to someone starts here
PHC is appointment-only. Message or call and a real person answers — Monday to Saturday, 10am to 8pm PKT.
Not sure whether this is us? Contact us anyway. We will tell you directly whether we can help, and refer you elsewhere if we cannot.
Six details, and we can match you
- Name of the person who will attend
- Their age
- What is going on, in your own words
- Whether you would prefer a male or female psychologist
- Online, or in clinic in Karachi
- Whether the person attending is a minor or elderly
If someone else is paying, we will also ask for guardian or payer details. A slot is held once the booking payment is received — half the fee, at least 24 hours ahead.