Counselling

Counselling is typically shorter-term, goal-focused support around a specific life situation — a difficult marriage, a career decision, processing a loss — for someone who isn't necessarily experiencing a diagnosable psychiatric condition.

These overlap constantly — someone starting out wanting relationship counselling might reveal an underlying depression that needs its own treatment. Being seen by a psychiatrist for counselling means that shift, if it happens, gets recognised and named properly.

Marital & Relationship Counselling

Couples in distress commonly wait years after problems first surface before seeking help — the Gottman Institute has found this delay averages around six years. In India, the traditional mediating role once played by joint family elders has diminished for many urban couples, leaving fewer natural checkpoints before a struggling marriage becomes deeply entrenched.

Student, Career & Exam Stress

Academic and career pressure in India often extends well beyond school years — multi-year competitive exam preparation, early-career uncertainty, and the strain of demanding professional environments all bring people in seeking support that doesn't fit neatly into "student" or "working adult" categories.

Grief & Adjustment Support

Grief in India is often experienced communally — rituals, extended family, and religious mourning practices provide real structure. But this can create tension for people whose internal grief doesn't resolve on the timeline the community's rituals suggest it should.

Prolonged Grief Disorder, now formally recognised in ICD-11, describes grief that remains persistent and significantly impairing beyond about six months — a real, diagnosable, treatable condition, not a personal failure to "move on properly."

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, NIIMS, Greater Noida, and consultant psychiatrist at Sowaka Care. MD Psychiatry, People's University, with residency training at AIIMS Raipur.