My parents funded the first therapy sessions I had for bulimia, in my 20s. It was almost a grand for three private sessions. Although they stopped me binging and purging, I was still in a lot of distress afterwards. I now know that’s because my eating disorder was a ‘secondary’, i.e. arising a result of my primary mental health issue (anxiety).

I didn’t get a diagnosis of panic disorder until 2013. By that stage I was working in mental health, so the six sessions of CBT I was fortunate enough to receive swiftly through the NHS were no help whatsoever. The therapist couldn’t believe how quickly I was understanding what they were telling me. I was sitting there thinking ‘yeah, that’s exactly what I would say’.

So, it was back to private options: I had talking therapy to explore childhood experiences, then later EMDR (eye motion desensitisation and reprocessing) to ‘reset’ my responses to those triggers and memories. All in all, I had about 50 sessions over the space of two years. Each time, I was shelling out £75.

When people baulked at the cost, I responded by (truthfully) saying I knew people who spend that amount of money on beauty treatments. I hadn’t had my hair cut in years. I never got facials or manicures. “It depends on your priorities,” I’d declare, piously.

Living as I do in a highly populated area, today I’d likely be amongst the one in ten people who have been waiting over a year to receive treatment on the NHS, according to Mind. Even this might be a generous reading of the data, since therapists have said it is skewed by the number of people who give up and drop out of the waiting process.

As for going private, the cost-of-living crisis has rendered this an impossibility for many. In fact, the percentage of families with no money left at all by the end of each month increased nearly twofold between 2022 and 2023.

“I can only manage my anxiety disorder due to privilege – we need to acknowledge that”