The GGZ Waiting List: How to Get Therapy in English Sooner

Published June 2026

If you have looked for mental health care in the Netherlands, you already know the shape of the problem. You went to your huisarts, you got a referral, and then you hit a wall of waiting. Or you are still trying to get the referral and bracing for what comes after. Either way, the gap between deciding you want help and actually getting it can run for months, and that gap is its own kind of strain when you are already not doing well.

This is a guide to what is actually happening: why the GGZ wait is so long, what you are entitled to that you have probably never been told about, and the honest set of options for getting therapy in English sooner. Some of those options keep you inside the public system. One of them is me, and I will be clear about where I fit and where I do not.

How the GGZ actually works

The Dutch system routes everything through your huisarts, the general practitioner, who is the gatekeeper for the whole thing. You cannot get reimbursed mental health care without going through them first. When you raise a mental health concern, the huisarts can handle it themselves, send you to the praktijkondersteuner GGZ (POH-GGZ), a mental health nurse working out of the GP practice for shorter and lighter support, or write a referral into the GGZ proper.

The GGZ itself is split in two. Generalistische basis GGZ is for milder, shorter, more clearly defined problems. Specialistische GGZ is for more complex or severe situations. Which one you are routed to is decided at referral and intake, not by you. The treatment that follows is built around a diagnosis and is conducted in Dutch, unless the specific practice happens to have an English-speaking clinician with availability, which in practice is rare and waitlisted on top of the waitlist.

Why the wait is so long

There is an official answer to how long you should have to wait. Dutch providers and insurers agreed on maximum acceptable waiting times called the Treeknormen: no more than four weeks from referral to intake, no more than ten weeks from intake to the start of treatment, and no more than fourteen weeks in total. That is the standard. The reality is that the norm is exceeded across every diagnosis group, and the gap between the standard and the reality is not small.

As of early 2025, around 108,000 people were waiting for GGZ care, and roughly 63,000 of them had been waiting longer than the Treeknorm allows. The causes are structural rather than anything you did: too little contracted capacity, a workforce shortage, treatment caps, and providers closing or shrinking. Amsterdam and Utrecht tend to run worse than the national average. None of this is your fault, and none of it is something you can fix by waiting more patiently.

The faster route almost nobody uses

Here is the thing most people are never told. When your wait exceeds the Treeknorm, your health insurer is not a bystander. Dutch insurers carry a zorgplicht, a legal duty of care, and they are obligated to help you find faster treatment. This is called wachtlijstbemiddeling, or zorgbemiddeling, waiting-list mediation. You call your insurer, you tell them your wait is too long, and they are required to look for a provider who can see you sooner and to cover that care.

You can request this once the wait to intake passes four weeks, or once treatment will not start within fourteen. And it works more often than you would guess: in more than half of cases, people who used mediation were treated at least a month sooner. The catch is that almost nobody uses it. One survey found only about ten percent of waitlisted people had asked for mediation, and a third did not know it existed. If you take one practical thing from this guide, take this: call your insurer and use the word wachtlijstbemiddeling. It is your right, it costs you nothing, and the system is quietly counting on you not to ask.

Your options, laid out honestly

There is no single right answer here. It depends on what you need, how urgently, and what you can pay. The honest menu:

Wait in the public system. If you need medication, a formal diagnosis, assessment, or care for something severe or high-risk, the GGZ is the right place and you should stay in it. It is also the route if reimbursement is essential and you cannot pay privately. Use the mediation right above to make the wait shorter.

POH-GGZ through your huisarts. For shorter-term support while you wait, the mental health nurse at your GP practice can sometimes start much sooner than the GGZ proper, with no eigen risico and no separate referral. It is not depth therapy, but it is something, and it is fast.

Switch providers via mediation. Covered above. Underused. Do it.

Private Dutch practice. You can pay out of pocket for a Dutch private therapist and skip the referral and much of the wait. The work is usually still in Dutch, and good private practices often carry their own waiting lists.

Private English-language therapy, online. This is what I do. No referral, no waiting list, no diagnosis, no Dutch fluency required, and nothing enters your medical record. You pay per session and there is no insurance involved on either side. I can normally start within a week or two.

Where the eigen risico comes in, and where it does not

One detail that surprises people: even reimbursed GGZ care is not free at the point of use. The compulsory annual deductible, the eigen risico, is 385 euros in 2026, set by the government and identical at every insurer, and it applies to specialist GGZ care, though your GP visits are exempt. So the public route still costs you the first 385 euros in any year it touches. Private therapy with me sits entirely outside that system, so the eigen risico never enters into it. You are paying for the sessions directly, not paying down a deductible.

How I fit, and where I do not

I am a US-trained therapist working online in English, and I am a private option for people in the Netherlands who want to start now rather than wait. My work is open-ended and pattern-focused, not a diagnosis-coded protocol, and it stays completely private. The trade is explicit: no insurance reimbursement, in exchange for speed, language, depth, and confidentiality. You can read more about my practice on the Netherlands page, or about how online therapy holds up against meeting in person.

I am also clear about where I am not the answer. I do not prescribe medication, and I do not provide formal diagnoses or assessments for insurance or disability purposes. Those run through your huisarts, a psychiater, or a BIG-registered clinician inside the Dutch system. If reimbursement is essential for you, you need a BIG-registered provider, not me. And if what you need is the public system, use the mediation right and make it move faster. A free fifteen-minute call is usually enough to work out which of these you actually need.

Common questions about the GGZ wait