Sources
Where these numbers come from.
Every figure we quote is below, with the organisation that published it, the year it was collected and a link to the original. Where a number is our own arithmetic on published components, we say so.
01 Demand
The market.
40%
of Ontario adults with a diagnosed mental health condition report partially or completely unmet needs. The figure is 41% nationally and 52% among adults aged 18 to 34.Canadian Institute for Health Information, Taking the Pulse: Measuring shared priorities for Canadian health care, 2025. Canadian Community Health Survey 2024, published 23 October 2025.
50%
of people referred to community mental health counselling received a first appointment within 30 days. One in ten waited four months or more.Canadian Institute for Health Information, Wait Times for Community Mental Health Counselling. 2024–25, covering ten jurisdictions including Ontario, updated October 2025.
46.6%
of people living with a mood or anxiety disorder received counselling or therapy. 51.4% consulted any health professional about it.Statistics Canada, Investigating disparities in mental health care service use among people with mood and anxiety disorders, Health Reports. Mental Health and Access to Care Survey 2022, published 21 January 2026.
33.0%
of people who knew they needed mental health care and did not receive it said help was not readily available. 30.5% said they were too busy and 27.7% did not know where to go.Statistics Canada, Health Reports, January 2026. Mental Health and Access to Care Survey 2022.
02 Virtual care
How care is delivered.
42.5%
of people who used health care in the previous twelve months had at least one virtual appointment. This is our arithmetic: the sum of the 37.2% who used both virtual and in-person care and the 5.3% who were virtual only.Statistics Canada, Virtual care use in Canada: Variation across sociodemographic and health-related factors, Health Reports. Canadian Social Survey 2023, released 19 November 2025.
78.5%
of those who were offered virtual care or wanted it had a virtual appointment. Only 8.9% declined one that was offered.Statistics Canada, Health Reports, November 2025. Canadian Social Survey 2023.
24 days
median wait for a first virtual community counselling appointment, against 29 days in person.Canadian Institute for Health Information, Wait Times for Community Mental Health Counselling, 2024–25.
03 The profession
Registered psychotherapists in Ontario.
17,381
psychotherapists registered with CRPO at 31 December 2025: 11,317 in the Registered Psychotherapist class, 5,832 Qualifying and 232 Inactive.College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, 2025 Fair Registration Practices Report, pp.20–21. Prepared for the Office of the Fairness Commissioner, published April 2026. The class labelled “Full / General / Independent Practice” is the Commissioner’s template name for the RP class. It does not mean those registrants have completed the 1,000-hour independent practice requirement.
8,180
CRPO registrants at 31 December 2020. The register has since grown 2.13 times, which is 16.3% a year.College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, Annual Report 2020/21, p.6. The growth rate is our arithmetic on the two published endpoints.
48%
growth in psychotherapist supply per population across Canada between 2020 and 2024, the fastest of any health profession group.Canadian Institute for Health Information, Canada’s mental health and substance use workforce, published 28 May 2026.
41%
of people in Ontario’s psychotherapist occupation are self-employed, against 15% across all occupations. Around 33,250 people work in the occupation in Ontario.Job Bank, Employment and Social Development Canada, Psychotherapist, NOC 41301, Ontario, updated 19 November 2025. NOC 41301 is roughly twice the size of the CRPO register and includes addictions, art and music, child and youth, and marriage and family counsellors. Treat it as directional, not as a measurement of registered psychotherapists.
04 Travel
What an office session costs a client.
34.9 min
average one-way commute in the Toronto census metropolitan area in May 2025, the longest in Canada and 1.6 minutes longer than a year earlier. The national average is 26.7 minutes. The round trip of about 70 minutes is our arithmetic on the one-way figure.Statistics Canada, Number of Canadian commuters increases for fourth straight year in 2025, The Daily, 26 August 2025. Statistics Canada does not publish an Ontario-wide average in this release, so we do not quote one.
17.4%
of employed Canadians worked mostly from home in May 2025, down from 18.7% a year earlier. The other 82.6% commuted.Statistics Canada, The Daily, 26 August 2025. We include the decline because it runs against the common claim that everyone now works from home.
05 Our own figures
What we counted ourselves.
Two numbers on this site are ours rather than a published body’s, and they are marked as such wherever they appear.
$175
median published fee for a 50-minute individual session.The median of 24 Ontario psychotherapy practices whose fees are published on their own websites, surveyed by us in September 2026. It is a sample of public price lists, not a survey of the profession. It is the figure we recommend as a starting rate.
$150 to $210
a month to run a virtual practice.Our own costing of the software a practice actually needs: booking and notes, business email, a phone number with text messaging, and professional liability insurance. List prices as at September 2026. Website and hosting are included in the programme.
06 What we leave out
Numbers we will not use.
Some widely quoted figures did not survive checking, so they are not on this site.
Clinic fee splits. Every 60/40 and 70/30 in circulation traces back to a consultant blog or a software vendor, mostly American. No Canadian body publishes what group practices retain from associates, so we quote no industry average. The calculator on the home page uses your split, which is the only one that matters to you.
Therapist burnout. There is no Canadian survey of psychotherapists on burnout, or on intent to leave employment for private practice. We are not going to borrow one from another profession and present it as yours.
Satisfaction with virtual mental health care. The 83% and 90% figures still in circulation come from a 2020 survey. They are six years old and we do not repeat them.
Earnings by employment type. No source separates what self-employed therapists earn from what employed therapists earn. We do not claim you will earn more. We show you the arithmetic and you decide.