How Much Does Therapy Cost in Ho Chi Minh City: 2025 Guide

What therapy costs in Ho Chi Minh City in 2026

The Vietnamese decision is not which clinic. It is which system. A psychiatric examination at a public hospital is reported at 40,000 to 150,000 VND; a thirty-minute psychological consultation at a private clinic at 300,000 to 1,000,000 VND. That is roughly a fifteen-fold gap, and it is not a discount: psychiatric examination sits inside the subsidised public system, while talking therapy is largely a private service outside it.

These are guiding estimates. Therapists set their own fees. The private figures are based on prices found advertised on multiple blogs, not official authoritative sources. Use with caution. The public figure has harder ground: the Ministry of Health's own price decision for Central Psychiatric Hospital 1 (Quyết định 3527/QĐ-BYT, effective 22 November 2024) sets the public examination schedule.

The public route in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City's public route runs through Bệnh viện Tâm thần TP. HCM, the city psychiatric hospital, which publishes its own price list section on its site; the Ministry's national decision calibrates what public examination costs.

BHYT, the social health insurance, supports costs at public hospitals; some private clinics do not accept it at all, so ask before booking. A convention worth knowing: private fees often track the doctor's academic rank and title, so the fee signals seniority rather than session length.

If you are paying privately

Ask the fee, the session length, whether the practitioner is a psychiatrist (a medical doctor who can prescribe) or a psychologist, and whether BHYT or your private insurance applies. Online sessions widen the pool and often cost less.

Sources

• Ministry of Health, Quyết định 3527/QĐ-BYT (2024), via the national legal database: the public price schedule for Central Psychiatric Hospital 1, effective 22 November 2024.

Reviewed July 2026. The public examination figure is from the Ministry of Health's own price decision, quoted with its effective date. Private ranges are advertised figures, labelled accordingly. We do not publish city price lists we cannot trace to sources that charge them.