A growing number of therapists are saying that their primary source of business, an online directory of therapists for hire via Psychology Today, has turned sour.
The online listing, on the Psychology Today website, has long been the 800-lb. gorilla for therapists looking for clients and clients looking for therapists. Claiming to be the largest such site with 80,000 listings, Psychology Today offers for a $29.95 monthly charge not just a listing with a therapists’ introduction, insurances accepted, address and free messaging or phone listing for a potential introduction, but also a free privacy-compliant telehealth platform and secure client messaging. People looking for a therapist can filter by geographical region, specialty and insurances accepted, as well as things like gender, therapy type, age, ethnicity, languages spoken, sexuality and faith. This is intended to make therapist-client matches better and faster.
The business model is clear: For a reasonable price, a therapist can be listed in one of the most-used search platforms, which also comes up high on Google search. A client searching the P.T. platform gets a list of candidates, typically 20 per webpage, with multiple pages, from which to choose.
The model has worked so well that it’s often the primary or only place a therapist is listed online. But in the past little while, therapists have started to complain in online forums and elsewhere that they’re not getting the traffic they used to get. Consider this:
- One East Coast therapist said she had investigated a drop in referrals that started a year and a half ago, meaning that she was no longer receiving referrals from Psychology Today clients, after years of satisfaction with the paid listing service. “My rate hasn’t changed, but the service I’m getting has changed,” she said in a Zoom interview. “I’m not getting referrals.”
- One Redditor wrote three months ago:.“What do we think is going on with the shift on Psych Today? Over the past few months I’ve seen a drop in the number of inquiries coming through, but my website leads are holding kinda steady especailly considering its summer. I’m curious if its me, a regional thing, or something more widespread.”
- Another wrote 9 months ago: “Like some others in this group, I’ve been wondering why my Psychology Today profile wasn’t producing referrals anymore. I’m usually on the first page or two for my zip code, and suddenly I’m buried to page 6 or 7, if I’m lucky.”
- Another two months ago theorized that therapists who sign up for practice management companies like Grow, Rula, Alma and so on can sign over their profile rights to those companies, which might direct traffic to the company and not the therapist.
- Another six months ago titled “Psychology Today is BARREN” kicked off a thread that included the comment “It seems like it’s really slowed down lately! I used to get at least 5 month, 10 on a good month. Now it’s like 1 every other month.”
In response to a query asking if Psychology Today had seen a drop in referrals, a Psychology Today spokesperson wrote by email: “Yes, I’ve heard that concern. What we see in our data is that overall traffic to the site — and total contacts to therapists — has remained strong throughout this period. This is despite significant industry shifts: the rise of AI, the expansion of therapy networks (more on those below), and Google’s changes in how it ranks and blends sponsored and organic results.
“Through all of this, Psychology Today profiles have been remarkably resilient. People continue to rely on Psychology Today as the best way to evaluate and compare therapists.” The spokesperson wrote that this statement could be attributed to Psychology Today but not to a specific person. (If you have information to contribute, email jeanne@clearhealthcosts.com or call Signal 914-450-9499.)
Not completely new
One person investigating the issue is a 50-year-old licensed clinical social worker who practices in two East Coast cities. She became a therapist after a number of years in digital marketing, so she knows a lot about the online world. She spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve her professional relationships with clients who might not want to see a therapist who talks to journalists. (We hear a lot of that. Please, folks! We’re not that scary!)
“I have always considered myself tremendously lucky,” she said. “I have never not had a wait list.”
She said she noticed the Psychology Today drop a year and a half ago.
During lockdown, she said, she was getting something like one referral a day from Psychology Today. Then, last year, she was graduating a client and noticed that she had no waitlist. Looking at her Psychology Today profile, she said, she noticed a 50 percent decrease in referrals.
She called Psychology Today and was told that her profile was “not optimized,” which she scoffed at. She has a friend who works at a big tech company that she declined to name on the record, and so she reached out for information. The friend said Psychology Today traffic was down 10 percent — but her referrals were down 50 percent.
Mental health crisis
She then started to contact other therapists in the two cities where she practices, and heard much the same thing from others. “They basically stopped sending traffic to individual therapists” about a year and a half ago, she said, despite the commonly reported news that the country is suffering from a mental health crisis and that demand for therapy is up.
Colleagues have told her their experiences are similar, she said — maybe about 100 so far. She has tried to ask Psychology Today for some answers, but said that has been unavailing. “They will not respond to inquiries,” she said. “I have literally called or emailed every single senior person on the P.T. staff.”
She said she thinks that Psychology Today has arrangements with the mental health platforms that have sprung up with venture or private equity funding — Alma, Grow, Headway, Octave, Rula — and that those arrangements have some way of advantaging platform therapists — placing their profiles higher in the listings than non-platform ones. She said she thinks that’s perfectly reasonable, that Psychology Today and the platforms have side arrangements. “But my rate hasn’t changed,” she said, referring to the monthly $29.95 fee she pays. “The service i’m getting is not the same. I’m not getting referrals.”
Other therapists are often similar to her in their approach to business development, she said, relying on their networks and on Psychology Today. “Most therapists don’t feel good about advertising,” she said. “I get most of my clients through networking and this listing.”
One solution: She said she would pay $10 a month more for a competitive Psychology Today listing, and she thinks others would too. But she said she’s been unable to reach anyone at Psychology Today to talk about this.
She also said she is aware of other listings platforms but doesn’t see a lot of value in them, so she hasn’t gone there yet — and she is still holding out hope that Psychology Today will somehow return to its former usefulness, or a semblance of that.
It’s also true that there are other sources of referrals that may have grown exponentially in the last few years — not only the platforms’ aggressive approach to listings and collecting clients, but also things like widespread advertising by Betterhelp, Talkspace, Cerebral and Headway. (Betterhelp reported a drop in revenue earlier this year.) AI chat tools are employed by some people to find a therapist, which might also completely sidestep Psychology Today.
And of course, some people who are unable to find or afford a therapist might seek some kind of mental health help from one of the many AI therapy-like tools, such as Abby, “your 24/7 AI therapist, always at your fingertips,” or a therapy chatbot like Ash.
Psychology Today response
In response to a question to Psychology Today asking if they can explain why some see drops and others don’t, the spokesperson wrote:
“There have always been differences in how many contacts individual therapists receive. Profiles that are complete, client-focused, transparent, and professionally presented — including strong photos and video — tend to perform well. That has always been consistent.”
Can Psychology Today tell me any reason for such a drop? Most of these therapists are longtime customers and are surprised.
“We periodically update our algorithms to improve the consumer experience and provide more balanced choice, rather than concentrating traffic in one direction,” the spokesperson wrote. “However, there has been no overall decline in directory visits and no material change in total contacts. Individual fluctuations do occur, but they do not reflect a system-wide shift.”
Sussex Publishers is the company that has published Psychology Today magazine since it acquired the magazine in 1991. Sussex Directories, which runs the find-a-therapist directory, is a technology company, the spokesperson said, creator of the directory interface and of other directories available in the U.S. and in other countries. The two companies have common ownership; according to its terms of use page. Sussex Directories is based in George Town, Grand Cayman, in the Cayman Islands. One advantage to being based in the Caymans is tax avoidance.
Others see downturn
Therapists online and in interviews said they had noticed a downturn starting around a year or a year and a half ago. It is by no means consistent — some therapists say they have seen no difference, but a lot of people online and in conversations have said the downturn is noticeable, with some saying they have discontinued their Psychology Today listings after many years.
This is not a completely new conversation. Psychology Today seems in some sense to be the therapist platform that therapists love to hate.In 2018, TherapyDen wrote a piece titled “5 reasons to cancel your Psychology Today listing… and 5 reasons to keep it forever.”
“I feel like I have had more conversations about the Psychology Today therapist directory than anyone else,” the piece starts. “I have analyzed it for years, torn it apart, studied its code, scrutinized its user interface and figured out why it works for some and doesn’t work for others. As a therapist with a private practice, I had a listing on Psychology Today for years and experienced firsthand both the good and the bad.”
It is widely known, though, that for therapists in a major metropolitan area, it’s hard to stand out in the Psychology Today listings — being at the top of search is desirable but difficult to achieve.
The platforms
There is a lot of conversation among therapists about the practice management companies or platforms — like Grow, Rula and Alma — taking over Psychology Today profiles. Here is Rula’s policy, screenshotted Nov. 11, 2025.
Some of the platforms offer that they will take over management of a therapist’s profile and pay for it, relieving the therapist of managing and paying, and also pledging to optimize the profile. But that case means that the therapist no longer owns the profile, and strange things can happen.
They all say they will manage a therapist’s profile only with permission. Some therapists may have one listing with their own phone number, and one listing that goes to a number for the company. (See examples below.)
“Rula cannot take over existing Psychology Today profiles. However, we are happy to create and manage a new one for you. If you want a new profile created by the Profiles team, please email profiles@rula.com,” is the language on the Rula page titled “Your Psychology Today profile questions.
“Different address appearing on your profile Rula places therapist profiles in areas based on client demand and is likely to change over time. For this reason, you will often see an address on your profile different than the place you live in.”
Opting out
Here is Grow Therapy’s FAQ for providers on Psychology Today profiles as well: Grow says it will own and maintain the therapist’s profile, but the therapist can opt out of this practice and maintain his or her own, separate from the Grow one, meaning there will be two — one under Grow’s control and one under the therapist’s control. Here’s a Nov. 10 screenshot of the policy.
Commenters on Reddit note that this means that Grow can put its phone number on the profile so a caller will speak to Grow first, and that Grow can then send the client to anyone on Grow’s list — maybe not the person in the profile. Grow casts this in the rosiest possible terms.
“Providers have noted that having a profile with Psychology Today has helped them boost their referrals and meet their goals,” the site says. “Fortunately, a Psychology Today profile is included as part of your provider perks. It is one of the various high-profile directories on which you are listed as a Grow Therapy provider….
“What if I already have an account but don’t want Grow Therapy to manage it? – Having a dedicated Grow-managed page is recommended but not mandatory. Please note that independently managed pages will not receive booking assistance or responses, such as calls and emails, like Grow-managed pages do.”
‘Mutually beneficial’
“Why don’t you use my contact information for the profile? – Providers using the Grow Therapy reception services typically experience a higher client conversion rate. Since it’s mutually beneficial for Grow to convert leads to booked clients, the team is happy to pay for the profile. If you wish to manage phone calls and emails independently, we regret that we cannot manage or cover the cost of your account, as Grow Therapy will not be handling or converting new leads.”
Alma’s page titled “Psychology Today Partnership Pilot FAQ” reads in part: “Practice growth is a top priority for many of our members. To better support that goal, Alma is exploring a partnership with Psychology Today. The first step will be a six month pilot, during which participating Alma members will have the option to be reimbursed for a profile in Psychology Today’s online directory (which typically costs $29.95/month). We invited a small number of Alma members to participate in the pilot based on a few factors, including availability for new clients and private practice goals.”
If you look at Rula, Alma and Grow providers on PsychologyToday, several have multiple profiles, some with “managed by” statements, differentiating the profiles — an individual’s profile, and the one that is managed by a platform. We also found one from Octave.
The Headway providers with Psychology Today profiles display a slightly different presence for Headway.
Profile control
One therapist noticed a drop in referrals — and then she found that Grow seemed to have taken control of her profile without her permission.
The therapist, Kim Kabar, is a licensed marital and family therapist credentialed in California and Arizona. She said in a Zoom interview that she had discussed joining Grow in August, then decided against it, sending an online notification that she was declining to join and receiving confirmation from Grow. At the time, she had two Psychology Today profiles, one for California and one for Arizona.
After declining to join Grow, she said by email and on Zoom, she canceled her existing Psychology Today profiles, receiving confirmation from Psychology Today that both were canceled on Sept. 17 and Sept. 26.
But much to her surprise, on Oct. 13, she wrote, she “realized that link to my psychology today profile was being diverted to list of therapists in Long Beach area instead.” She emailed Psychology Today to inquire what was happening, and heard from them that “it can take time for search engines to remove all old links. Since you’ve created multiple profiles over time, the redirect you’re seeing in the video is tied to an old, inactive profile that remains temporarily indexed in search results. Search engines will remove this according to their own removal schedules.”
On Oct. 16, she said, she created a new profile — and on that same day she did a video of links to her Psychology Today profile from Bing and Google being redirected to a number that was not her number, and announced that it was a Grow number.
The only document she ever signed, she said was a “compliance and security education” document during her conversations about joining Grow — never anything like a contract. She described this all in a blog post that included a link to the short video recording of herself calling the number on her Psychology Today profile and hearing a Grow therapy recorded message.
On Oct. 18, she received a response from Psychology Today to her query saying “I want to clarify that any contacts made through your Psychology Today profile will be directed exclusively to the phone number and/or email address associated with your account. If a provider chooses to have their contacts managed by a group practice or a similar entity, that decision is at their discretion. We make every effort to identify these situations. When we identify that a profile is managed by a known third party, we automatically display a
notice on the profile, such as ‘Profile managed by COMPANY NAME, your contact may be redirected to a representative.'”
We asked Grow for a comment, and sent them a link to her blog post. A spokesperson, Kristina McPherson, wrote: “So our team looked into it and we have no history of this therapist ever having a Grow profile, and the email and phone number are erroneous (e.g., none of our providers have @grow emails, that’s for corporate employees like myself, and that phone number says we’re a scheduling platform but we’re a provider network). That said we can’t fully investigate from the video only — we’d need the live link. Since it looks fixed now — we assume this is another question only PT can answer.”
The platforms
A number of Redditors and others think the platforms’ business arrangements with Psychology Today are a cause of the drop. Here’s one from 10 months ago: “Not getting any Psychology Today referrals? This might be why…
“Like some others in this group, I’ve been wondering why my Psychology Today profile wasn’t producing referrals anymore. I’m usually on the first page or two for my zip code, and suddenly I’m buried to page 6 or 7, if I’m lucky. So I start clicking on all the other therapists websites to see where they work. First one directs me to Rula. Second one directs me to Rula. Third, fourth, fifth… they are ALL RULA. What the hell.”
Another, three months ago: “Came here to say this. I’ve had the same experience. I experimented with it to see if my profile and colleagues’ profiles would come up with searches relevant to our specialties, location, insurance, etc. Tech company linked profiles and group practices came up first whether or not they were relevant to the search. And I was tinkering with my profile regularly to try to keep it higher in the search results. I just decided to cancel my account.”
It is not impossible to imagine that if a platform is managing the profile, it could have a more structured approach to updating profiles that might appeal to the Psychology Today algorithm than would an individual therapist.
P.T. response
I asked Psychology Today to explain its relationships with platforms like Grow, Rula, Alma, Octave and so on.
The spokesperson’s answer: “Psychology Today’s directory is designed to present consumers with the full range of their therapy options and allow them to choose what works for them. The networks you mention offer therapy — often online and frequently covered by insurance — and for many people they are an important part of the landscape. For that reason, they are included in the directory.”
I asked: “I see that they have arrangements with you whereby they can manage a therapist’s profile. How does that work?”
The spokesperson’s answer: “We provide the same directory tools to individual practitioners and to organizations that support therapists. Networks may manage profiles on behalf of therapists, but each profile is created one at a time and is subject to the same standards and rules as any individual listing. Maintaining the integrity and fairness of the directory is essential, and all participants operate under the same terms.
“To be clear: everyone pays exactly the same price for a profile. There are no exceptions, no preferential rates, and no ‘inside deals.’ The price for a listing in Psychology Today has remained unchanged since 2004. We view the directory as a shared network: as more therapists join, the network becomes more valuable for everyone, and keeping the cost stable is part of our commitment to that principle. Psychology Today has been in business since 1967, and our approach has always been to act ethically and support the people who rely on us.
I asked: “Do those platforms receive advantageous placement for their therapists’ profiles because of their contracts with you? Are their profiles listed above non-platform profiles?”
The answer: “No. Network affiliation does not influence ranking or placement. All profiles follow the same visibility criteria. We do identify which therapists are in-network so consumers understand the type of services being offered and how they are accessed, but that information has no impact on ranking.
“It’s also worth noting that even after COVID and the growth of video-based therapy and AI tools, consumers still tend to prefer local, in-person therapists when available and affordable. Cost and insurance coverage play a critical role in those decisions, which is exactly where your mission at ClearHealthCosts aligns with ours: helping people navigate their options with greater transparency. It’s a daily challenge. We’ve been doing it for the last 20 years and expect to be doing it for the next.”
I asked Grow: “We see that you and other platforms have arrangements with Psychology Today to manage profiles. Do you pay PT for this?” McPherson, the spokesperson, wrote: “We do not manage the profiles. Providers create their profiles and we do help them list across multiple platforms with their approval. The listings on PT are not free — everyone pays a fee — whether it’s an individual or a provider network like Grow.”
I asked: “Some therapists are saying they think that the platforms’ profiles are listed higher in the directory than those of individual, non-platform therapists. Does your arrangement with PT include favorable placement?” She answered: “I would direct that question to PT. Each platform has it’s own algorithm for how it ranks practices. But no — there is not a payment-based shortcut to the order of listings. It is likely some mix of profile completeness, location, key words, etc.”
Other listings
There are other listing services, but none as robust as Psychology Today. One, Zencare, bills itself as “quality over quantity” and adds that among its virtues are professional photography and videography, copywriting support, an all-in-one practice management solution and out-of-network benefits verification. (Some of these are add-ons to the basic price.) Zencare costs $59 per month ($69 in New York and California) with a setup fee of $80.
Some other competitors have different strategies. Two such listings are Inclusive Therapists, which says it works to expand care to disadvantaged populations, and Open Path Collective, a nonprofit national network that says it works with the underinsured, or generally clients in difficult financial situations. Others have different specialities: Octave bills itself as “Affordable Online Therapy That Works” and markets itself as having 96 percent of clients who “received coverage from their insurance provider, with an average out-of-pocket cost of $28 per session.” Talkiatry focuses on psychiatric care. Therapy for Black Girls is a directory of Black femme-identifying therapists.
There are many other listings that can provide a way for a client to find a therapist. A platform or practice management company like Alma, Headway, Rula or Grow will have its own listings, so if a client starts there, she may never see non-Alma providers. This has a clear effect of siphoning off traffic that might previously have gone to Psychology Today.
Boosting visibility
Therapists in interviews and on social media discuss ways of boosting their visibility on Psychology Today — with many saying they think that updating their profiles regularly boosts their visibility. Even a small change has a positive effect, they say — even to the point of changing a comma or an adjective, and then making a similar small change a week or two later. This seems to make sense — that the algorithm governing the directory would give an advantage to profiles that have been tended to, rather than profiles that stay the same month after month, year after year.
One therapist told us she regularly receives exhortations from Psychology Today to update her profile.
It is also worth noting that there are ebbs and flows seasonally in recommendations and referrals for therapy. There’s typically a boom before the holidays and the turn of the year, and a sag in the summer, generally — especially in August, when many therapists take the opportunity of slower demand to go on vacation. The boom in the search for services during the pandemic lockdown and beyond also disrupted the usual patterns somewhat.
How they appear
Some therapists will take profiles in several cities or areas if they work there; this would of course maximize their chances for getting a client if the client is seeking a therapist in New York City or in the suburbs, or in California and Arizona.
A number of Rula therapists do not have Psychology Today profiles mentioning Rula. A random spot-check search for patterns suggested a fair amount of types of listings.
For those that do have Rula profiles, the policy Rula states on its site has clear rules. Under one heading, “Different address appearing on your profile,” it states: “Rula places therapist profiles in areas based on client demand and is likely to change over time. For this reason, you will often see an address on your profile different than the place you live in.”
One therapist who does had two Psychology Today profiles, one in New York City and one in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. , both flagged “managed by Rula Health” in the week of Nov. 2. A few days later, by Nov. 8, she had only one, the Yorktown Heights one. On Rula itself, she’s listed in Beacon, N.Y. (We originally had names, links and screenshots for all these therapists, but removed them because the important part was the patterns, not the names.)
One, listed as living in Paramus, N.J., has a Psychology Today profile with a 646 number (that’s usually a Manhattan area code) and “managed by Rula Health.”
One has two profiles: One with a 914 number in New York, N.Y. (odd because 914 is a Westchester County area code, not a New York City code), managed by Rula Health, and one with an 845 number in Carmel, N.Y., managed by Lifestance Health.
An Austin, Tex., therapist has two Psychology Today profiles with different phone numbers. One, with a 737 area code, says she’s available online only. It says “Managed by Grow Therapy. Your call or email may go to a representative.” The other, with a 512 area code, lacking the “managed by Grow Therapy” line, says she’s available in person and online. That number changed a few weeks later to a 786 number.
One therapist in Austin, has a profile with a 512 number and a line that says “Managed by Octave. Your call or email may go to a representative.” She seems to have only the one profile.
Headway seems to manage PT listings differently. One therapist in Austin has a phone number on her profile and her address is listed as “Headway” in Austin. A call to her number got an answering machine, where I did not leave a message, and then she both called and texted me to establish contact. (Sorry, if you read this, I was mostly wondering if the call would go directly to Headway, or to you.)
One New York therapist has two profiles, with different phone numbers, neither seemingly managed by a platform. One in New York has a 929 number and says online only with a New York, N.Y. address; one has a 347 number and says online only with a Brooklyn address.
(If you have information to contribute, email jeanne@clearhealthcosts.com or call Signal 914-450-9499.)
