How to Cancel Psychology Today, and What Stays Online After the Profile Is Gone

You cancel a Psychology Today profile by asking for it, not by clicking a button. Psychology Today's Terms of Use (effective March 23, 2026) say that to deactivate and delete your profile, you use the Contact Us form or send your request to Psychology Today's support email address, which the Terms list in full.

Send it from the email address on your profile, and keep the reply. That reply is your record of the date you asked.

The membership itself is simple. Psychology Today's signup page lists a fixed monthly fee and says there are no contracts, so you can cancel at any time. What takes thought is the order you do things in, and what happens to your profile after it comes down. The rest of this guide covers both.

If you have not decided whether to leave at all, start with why Psychology Today referrals are dropping and our cost-per-contact look at whether Psychology Today is worth it. This page assumes you are leaning toward the exit.

Timing matters, because the Terms work against a request sent at the wrong moment.

• It renews on its own. The Terms (§13) say subscriptions "automatically renew at the end of each billing cycle."
• A billed month runs to the end. If your account has already been billed for the month you cancel in, the Terms say the profile "will remain live until the end of your monthly billing cycle before it is removed."
• No dating it ahead, no partial refunds. Psychology Today does not accept "pre or post-dated cancellation requests or process partial refunds."

Put together: you cannot send a request today that takes effect next month, and a request sent the day after renewal pays for a month you meant to skip. Find your renewal date in your billing history and send the request a few days before it. Your profile then stays up through the month you already paid for, and nothing more is charged.

Some profiles are not yours to cancel with Psychology Today. Grow Therapy's Psychology Today FAQ says that since June 1, 2026, providers must opt in to a Grow-managed profile, that Grow covers the cost of the profile, and that providers who want out complete Grow's opt-out form, with deletion that "may take 1–2 weeks."

So if Grow pays for your listing, the exit is a Grow opt-out, not an email to Psychology Today. The same FAQ says providers who were on the platform before June 1, 2026 may request to opt out of the program. Grow's FAQ also says it deactivates the profiles of providers who are not actively seeing clients or accepting referrals, and reactivates them when the referrals toggle is turned back on. Turning the toggle off pauses the profile; the opt-out form is what removes it.

If you are deciding what a directory listing should do for your practice at all, our Psychology Today comparison sets out what it does and does not do.

The cancellation takes two minutes. These three steps take longer, and they are what keep the decision from costing you anything.

1. Measure what the listing sends you

For at least 30 days, count every contact that came through Psychology Today and ask every new inquiry where they first found you. Some word-of-mouth referrals look you up on the directory before writing, which makes it look like the source when it was only the place they checked. Count fit, not volume: three well-matched inquiries are worth more than ten that do not fit your practice.

The reports disagree on what the listing is worth now. Therapists told ClearHealthCosts in December 2025 that their referrals had dried up, while Psychology Today told the same reporter that overall traffic and total contacts to therapists "remained strong" and that the listing price has not changed since 2004. Your own count settles it for your practice. If it shows booked, well-fit clients, keep the listing and build the rest anyway.

2. Save everything worth keeping

• Your profile text: the personal statement, specialties, treatment approaches, and fee and insurance details. Even if you rewrite it, it is your starting point.
• Your photos: the headshots and office photos on the profile.
• Your exact listing details: name, credentials, address and phone as they appear. Every listing that remains should match them.

3. Put the replacements in place first

The person who would have found you on Psychology Today is still looking, on Google or in an AI answer. Before the profile goes dark, make sure those places can find you directly:

• Your own website with a page for each thing you treat, structured data that says who you are and where you practice, a robots.txt that lets AI crawlers in, and a contact path you check every day.
• Your Google Business Profile, claimed and complete, with the same name, address and phone as your site.
• The other listings you keep, such as Bing Places, Apple Maps and any directory you stay on, all matching. For which therapist directories AI answers draw on and which they skip, see the therapist directories AI engines ignore.

For the wider set of channels therapists are moving to, see what is replacing Psychology Today for client acquisition.

Most cancellation guides stop here, and this is where the trouble starts. The profile coming down from the directory is not the same as your profile disappearing.

The Terms (§18) are direct about it: "Sussex Directories is not obligated to delete or return any Content you have shared on the platform after cancellation."

A canceled profile can keep feeding Google and AI answers. WebsiteTherapy checks what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI still say about a practice and drafts a fix for anything that is stale.

The copy also lives outside Psychology Today. Search results show what Google last saw. AI answers are built from pages those systems found, and an answer built from an old profile repeats the old fees, the old office and an availability that is no longer true. Directories that copied your listing keep their copy.

Start about two weeks after the profile comes down, then repeat once a month until everything matches.

1. Search your name and your practice name on Google. If a result still shows the removed profile, ask Google to update it. Google's Search Help says you can ask Google to refresh a search result if it shows old information even though the website has been updated. The same page notes that removing something from Google Search does not remove it from the internet, so the next steps still matter.
2. Ask the AI answers. Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity, and search Google, about your practice by name: where you practice, what you charge, whether you are taking new clients. Note what each answer says and which pages it cites. Fix the cited page, not the answer.
3. Check the directories that copied you. Health directories and listing sites often carry your details from an old source. Correct each one that is out of date, or ask for it to be removed.
4. Make your own site the current answer. Your fees, location and availability, stated plainly and dated on your own site, give a search engine and an AI answer a newer source than the old profile.

Then keep asking every new inquiry where they found you. The mix over the next few months is the real verdict on the decision.

The directory steps above are yours to take; we don't manage directory listings. For the practices we host, WebsiteTherapy checks what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI say about you and drafts a fix for anything out of date; the features page sets out what it covers. Whether to cancel, and when, stays your decision.

• Psychology Today: Directory Terms of Use, v1.0.21 (effective March 23, 2026)
• Psychology Today: therapist membership signup page
• Grow Therapy Help Center: Psychology Today FAQ
• Google Search Help: Remove my private info from Google Search (refreshing outdated results)
• ClearHealthCosts: Therapists say Psychology Today referrals have dried up, and express concern (December 10, 2025)