Online Therapy Across Dubai, the UAE and Beyond
Private, One-to-One Online Sessions With Belle Vie Therapy & Wellness
At Belle Vie Therapy & Wellness, we provide online therapy in Dubai for adults who want professional psychological support from home, from the office, or while travelling. Whether you are dealing with anxiety, depression, stress, trauma, or relationship difficulties, working with a psychologist by secure video is a private and flexible way to get help.
No clinic visit is required. Our online sessions are delivered by DHA- and CDA-licensed, internationally trained psychologists, and follow UAE healthcare and confidentiality regulations.
We are a psychology practice based in JLT, Dubai, working with clients across Dubai Marina, JBR, Jumeirah, Downtown Dubai and Emirates Hills, and with clients elsewhere in the UAE and overseas through secure video sessions. Couples can work with us remotely too: online couples sessions suit partners living in different countries, or whose schedules rarely line up in the same room.
What Online Therapy Involves
Online therapy (also called teletherapy, virtual therapy or online counselling) means meeting one-to-one with a licensed psychologist through a secure, encrypted video platform rather than in a consulting room. The structure of the work is the same as it is in the clinic.
Your first session is an assessment. Your psychologist will ask about what brought you to therapy, your history, what you have already tried, and what you want to be different. By the end of it you will have a clear sense of how they understand the difficulty and what a course of therapy would look like. Sessions usually run 50 to 60 minutes and start out weekly, though the frequency is agreed between you and your therapist and often reduces as things improve.
You do not need to install specialist software or buy equipment. A device with a camera and microphone, a stable internet connection, and a private space where you will not be interrupted are enough. Our team sends you the session link and walks you through the setup before you begin.
Online and in-person work are not mutually exclusive. Some clients see their psychologist at our JLT clinic and switch to video when they travel or when the commute is difficult. Others begin online and move to the room later. If medication may be relevant, our psychiatry service can be brought in alongside your therapy, and Dr. Peyman also sees patients as an online psychiatrist in Dubai.
Who Online Sessions Work Well For
Video sessions tend to suit people whose circumstances make a regular clinic appointment hard to keep, and people who simply feel more able to talk from their own space.
That includes professionals with demanding or unpredictable schedules, frequent travellers who would otherwise have to break off therapy for weeks at a time, people living outside Dubai or outside the UAE, parents who cannot easily arrange childcare, and anyone who values the privacy of not sitting in a waiting room.
A large share of our online clients are expatriates. Relocation asks a lot of people: a new work culture, a thinner social network, family several time zones away, and the particular loneliness of being settled on paper but not yet at home. Online sessions also let people continue with the same psychologist when they move between countries, which matters more than it sounds: not having to start again with someone new is often what keeps the work going.
Online therapy is not the right format for everything. If you are at immediate risk, in crisis, or need a level of care that video cannot safely provide, for example, a presentation requiring in-person psychiatric assessment or close medical monitoring, we will say so and help you find the appropriate support rather than continue online. If you are unsure which format fits, we can talk it through before you book.
Our Online Psychologists in Dubai and the UAE
All four of our psychologists offer online sessions: Dr. Elif Celebi Adam, Gordon Shaw, Tuna Bereket and Josephine Younes. Online psychiatry appointments are available with Dr. Peyman Mirshahzadeh through our online psychiatrist service.
What We Work On in Online Sessions
Our psychologists work with adults across the following areas:
- Anxiety and chronic stress: generalised worry, panic, social anxiety, health anxiety, and the persistent tension that comes with high-pressure work.
- Depression and low mood: loss of motivation and interest, disrupted sleep and appetite, self-critical thinking, withdrawal from people you used to see.
- Trauma and post-traumatic symptoms: intrusive memories, hypervigilance, avoidance, and the effects of events that have not been processed.
- Relationship and couples difficulties: recurring conflict, communication that has broken down, trust after a rupture, and decisions about the future of a relationship.
- Burnout and work-life imbalance: exhaustion that rest does not fix, cynicism about work that used to matter, and difficulty setting limits.
- Self-esteem and self-criticism: long-standing patterns of judging yourself harshly, and the perfectionism that often sits underneath them.
- Identity, adjustment and life transitions: relocation, career change, becoming a parent, separation, bereavement, and questions about direction.
- Sleep difficulties and emotional regulation: difficulty falling or staying asleep, and reactions that feel disproportionate to their trigger.
If you are not sure whether your difficulty fits any of these categories, that is a normal place to start. The first session exists partly to answer that question.
Our Therapeutic Approaches
Your therapist will propose an approach based on the assessment rather than applying one method to everything. The approaches we most often use over video include:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): a structured, present-focused approach to the thoughts and behaviours that maintain anxiety and low mood. CBT translates well to video: worksheets, thought records and between-session tasks can all be shared on screen.
EMDR: a trauma-focused approach for distressing memories that continue to intrude. EMDR can be delivered online, with the bilateral stimulation adapted for a video setting. Your psychologist will assess whether remote EMDR is appropriate for you, as some presentations are better held in the room.
Schema Therapy: for patterns that have been in place a long time and repeat across relationships and jobs, where shorter-term work has not held.
Mindfulness-based approaches and ACT: building a different relationship with difficult thoughts and feelings rather than trying to argue them away. Useful for chronic stress, recurrent depression and health-related worry.
You can read more about how we work on our psychotherapy approaches page. Whichever method is used, you and your therapist agree the goals at the start and review progress as you go.
Does Online Therapy Work as Well as Meeting in Person?
This is the question most people ask first, and it deserves a straight answer rather than reassurance.
The honest picture is more mixed than most clinic websites suggest. A 2024 systematic review of 29 randomised trials found that for post-traumatic stress, structured therapy delivered by video produced results with only small differences from in-person delivery, if any. For depression, the same review found a modest advantage for meeting in person, though the quality of that evidence was rated low. For anxiety, the evidence supporting video delivery is thinner still: not evidence that it fails, but less of it than we would like. Professional practice standards for remote work, such as the APA Guidelines for the Practice of Telepsychology, take the same position: telepsychology is a legitimate way to deliver care, with considerations specific to the format.
What this means in practice is that the format is worth a conversation rather than an assumption. If you are working on trauma, the evidence for doing that over video is reasonably solid. If you are dealing with depression and you can reasonably get to the clinic, your psychologist may suggest starting in the room and moving online later, or alternating. If travel or location makes in-person impossible, online work is a good deal better than no therapy at all, and that is often the real comparison.
The practical conditions matter too. A private space where you will not be overheard, a reliable connection, and a protected hour with your phone silenced are what let an online session feel like a session rather than a call.
Booking an Online Session With Belle Vie
Clients choose us for reasons that hold whether they are in the room or on screen: psychologists who are DHA- or CDA-licensed and internationally trained, extensive experience with expatriate and multicultural clients, sessions in English and several other languages, scheduling that works across time zones, and confidentiality handled to the same standard as in-person care. Psychiatric input is available in-house if it is needed.
Getting started is straightforward:
- Contact us through the website, by phone, or on WhatsApp.
- Tell us you would like online sessions, and anything you already know about what you are looking for.
- Our team matches you with a psychologist based on your concerns, goals and preferences, and you can request a different therapist at any point if the fit is not right.
- We confirm a time and send you a secure link. You connect from wherever you are.
Related reading: does online therapy feel the same as in-person therapy, what to expect in your first therapy session and which type of therapy is right for you.
You do not have to face things alone. Whether you live in Dubai or abroad, our psychologists are here to support you. You can book below.