Individual CBT sessions
Rough guide to course length: a specific phobia is often one to five sessions, panic eight to twelve, social anxiety and generalized anxiety twelve to twenty. These are courses with endpoints, which is what makes the total a knowable number.
Nothing here is saved or sent. Confirm any figure with the practice and your insurer before you rely on it.
What the length actually depends on
Not severity, mostly — diagnosis. A phobia is narrow and resolves fast. Panic responds quickly once interoceptive exposure starts. Social anxiety takes longer because the experiments are harder to construct. GAD is chronic and treatment usually reduces rather than eliminates it.
If a clinician can’t give you a range, that’s worth noticing —protocols have known parameters.
Before you trust the reimbursement figure
Call your insurer and ask four things: do I have out-of-network mental health benefits; what is the deductible and how much have I met; what percentage do you reimburse; and what is the allowed amount for these codes. The percentage applies to the allowed amount, not to the fee, and the gap is often substantial.
The cheaper routes that are genuinely good
Pre-licensed associates under supervision typically charge about half, and for a manualised treatment the outcome gap is smaller than the price gap.
Group CBT is considerably cheaper and, for social anxiety, arguably the better format — the group supplies the feared situation.
Guided self-help has solid evidence for mild to moderate anxiety when there’s periodic clinician contact. Much weaker unguided, where dropout is the norm.
University training clinics deliver protocol-driven CBT at low fees with close supervision.
What anxiety therapy costs covers each of these in more detail.