How Much Does Therapy Cost in Hong Kong? 2025 Guide

What therapy costs in Hong Kong in 2026

Hong Kong replaced its public fee schedule on 1 January 2026, and the mental health line items changed most: psychiatric day hospital attendance is now free, psychiatric community nursing is free, and a psychiatric specialist clinic visit costs HK$250. If you last checked these prices before 2026, every number you remember is wrong.

These are guiding estimates. Practitioners set their own fees.

The new public schedule, from the source

These are the Hospital Authority's own published charges for eligible persons (in practice, Hong Kong Identity Card holders), effective 1 January 2026:

Service	Charge
Family medicine clinic	HK$150 per attendance, HK$5 per drug item
Specialist clinic (incl. psychiatry, allied health)	HK$250 per attendance, HK$20 per drug item
Psychiatric day hospital	Free
Community nursing (psychiatric)	Free
Community allied health service	HK$100 per visit
Psychiatric inpatient bed	HK$200 per day
A&E	HK$400; free if triaged critical or emergency

Two protections sit under the schedule. First, an annual spending cap: from 1 January 2026, once an eligible patient's spending on specified public fees reaches HK$10,000 in a calendar year, further eligible charges for that year are dropped, with no means test. The HA's own wording: the cap works "without requiring financial assessment". Second, the means-tested fee waiver continues, and CSSA recipients are waived entirely.

What the reform tells you about where to go

The reform raised most fees, but it priced psychiatric day and community services at zero. That is a deliberate signal: Hong Kong's public system is steering mental health care toward community and day settings, and if you use them, the public route is close to free. The path in is ordinary: a family medicine clinic attendance at HK$150, then referral to a psychiatric specialist clinic at HK$250 a visit with HK$20 per drug item.

The queue is the price you pay in time rather than money: public specialist psychiatry is triaged, and routine referrals wait. That wait, more than any fee, is what sends people private.

The private market

Private psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors in Hong Kong set their own fees, and no professional body publishes a schedule. Pages quoting a standard Hong Kong session price are quoting themselves. The reliable figure is the practice's own quote; sliding scales exist and asking costs nothing. For non-eligible persons the public system is also open, at rates the HA publishes separately (a specialist attendance is HK$850).

If you need someone now

• Mental Health Support Hotline: 18111.
• Suicide Prevention Services: 2382 0000.
• The Samaritans (multilingual): via samaritans.org.hk.

Sources

• Hospital Authority, Fees and Charges: the eligible-persons schedule above, including the psychiatric day hospital and psychiatric community nursing free entries. Read 28 July 2026.
• Hospital Authority, Annual Spending Cap: the HK$10,000 calendar-year cap and the no-financial-assessment rule. Read 28 July 2026.
• Hospital Authority, Public Healthcare Fees and Charges Reform: the 1 January 2026 effective date and the reform's stated aims. Read 28 July 2026.

Reviewed July 2026. All public figures are the Hospital Authority's own, read at source on 28 July 2026, after the 1 January 2026 reform. Pre-2026 figures still circulating elsewhere no longer apply. We quote no private fees because none have a published source.