Teen Counselling in Defence Colony

Teen counselling in Defence Colony is confidential therapy for young people between roughly thirteen and eighteen. The short answer is our Malviya Nagar centre, because we do not have a centre in Defence Colony. If you are the teenager reading this rather than the parent, the section on what stays private is the one worth reading first.

Which eMbrace centre Defence Colony families use

Our closest centre to Defence Colony is in Malviya Nagar, at FC-29, Plot No. 5, Geetanjali, beside Malviya Nagar Metro Station Gate No. 1. We have no centre in Defence Colony, and it is a drive of some length, not a hop.

From Defence Colony, Jangpura and Lajpat Nagar the road route runs via Ring Road and Press Enclave Marg. On the metro it is a Violet Line to Yellow Line change at Central Secretariat or Hauz Khas depending on where you start, so most families in this catchment drive.

For families where the travel is the obstacle rather than the appointment, we run sessions online, and a good deal of child psychology work, particularly parent-facing sessions, does not lose anything in that format.

Two practical things about adolescents specifically. They can usually travel to a session alone, and a young person who arrives under their own steam engages very differently from one who has been driven there by a parent. And their week is genuinely full: school, coaching, boards. We schedule around that rather than expecting a teenager to drop something, and late-afternoon and evening slots are the ones that hold.

For parking, the nearest drop-off point and the quickest route at your particular time of day, ask on the intake call. Traffic and parking around every one of these centres change enough through the day that current directions from someone who works there beat anything we could fix on a web page.

When teen counselling is the right call

Adolescence is legitimately turbulent, and most of it does not need a therapist. What matters is duration, spread and function: whether something has persisted for weeks rather than days, whether it shows up in more than one part of their life, and whether it has started to shrink what they will do.

• Low mood or anxiety that has lasted several weeks and is not lifting
• Withdrawal from friends, activities or school they previously managed
• Exam or performance pressure that has stopped being motivating and started being disabling
• Any self-harm, or any talk of not wanting to be here, which we see the same week

Exam anxiety, social anxiety, low mood and digital and gaming difficulties each have their own page on our teen mental health hub.

What stays private, and what does not

This is the part that decides whether counselling works for a teenager, so we settle it in the first session with the young person and the parent in the room together. What a young person says is theirs. A parent gets themes, progress and what would help at home. A parent does not get a transcript, and we will not pass on what was said because it was asked for.

The limit is risk. If we believe a young person is at serious risk of harm, we share what we need to in order to keep them safe, and we tell them we are doing it rather than going behind them. Setting that out plainly at the start is what makes the privacy credible for the rest of the work.

What teenagers bring to counselling here

From Defence Colony and Jangpura the common presentations are anxiety and low mood in the senior school years, often reaching us after a school counsellor has been involved. That means the work usually starts further along than it otherwise would.

Self-harm disclosures are a real part of adolescent practice and this catchment is no different. We see those the same week, we work with the young person on what is driving it rather than only on stopping it, and we are explicit with them about what has to be shared.

Who you would see at our Malviya Nagar centre

Dr Supriya Malik, Founder and CEO, and Head of the Child Development Centre at Rainbow

PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Birmingham, where she was also a postdoctoral researcher, and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society in the UK. She designed the assessment and therapy pathways every eMbrace centre runs.

At our Malviya Nagar centre, the clinicians who take this work are:

Taranpreet Kaur, Clinical Psychologist

M.Phil in Clinical Psychology with distinction, plus a Post Graduate Diploma in School Counselling from Symbiosis. ACT and MBCT for anxiety, depression, OCD and trauma, and comprehensive psychological assessment. Works in English, Hindi and Punjabi.

Which of them you see is decided on the intake call rather than by whoever has the next free slot, and you are told who it will be before you book. Fuller biographies are on our about page.

Schools and services we already work with

Some of what we do around Defence Colony happens inside institutions rather than at a centre, which is often how a family first hears of us.

Our Malviya Nagar centre runs inside Rainbow Children's Hospital, New Delhi, which is why occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech therapy, behaviour therapy and special education sit in the same building as assessment.

Where a child or adult needs psychiatric input, we work with Sukoon across Delhi NCR for psychiatric assessment, consultation and medication management, so you are not left to find a psychiatrist yourself.

Fees, consent and how long it runs

Fees are quoted upfront on your intake call, before anything is booked, and depend on which clinician the young person works with.

Most courses run eight to sixteen weekly sessions with a formal review at around session six. On consent: a parent books and pays for a young person under eighteen, but the therapy only works if the teenager has agreed to it. We will not do useful work with someone who has been sent under protest, and we would rather spend the first session earning their agreement than pretend we have it.

Frequently asked questions