Counselor, Marriage & Family Therapist, Social Worker and Therapist
You have been holding it together for a long time. From the outside it probably looks like you are managing, which is part of what makes it hard to explain. What brings people here is usually anxiety that will not settle, grief that has outlasted everyone else's patience, the long aftermath of trauma, or a quiet disconnection that crept in while carrying more than was sustainable. Many have tried therapy before and found it did not quite reach them. Many are young adults navigating identity, family expectation, and the distance between who they are at home and who they are outside it.
I am Michael Elwan, an Accredited Social Worker with the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) and PhD candidate in mental health at Charles Sturt University. Based in Perth, I offer online therapy across Australia for young adults, adults and couples, alongside professional supervision for social workers and lived experience practitioners.
My work draws on fifteen years across mental health, suicide prevention, psychosocial disability, and senior service leadership. It is also shaped by lived and living experience: caregiving from age fourteen, migration from Egypt, and suicide bereavement within my family. These experiences inform how I work; with care, cultural humility, and a refusal to rush past what matters.
My therapeutic approach is relational and trauma-informed. I draw on attachment-based and emotionally focused approaches, alongside acceptance, mindfulness, and culturally responsive practices. Sessions are paced around what each person can hold, with attention to culture, identity, and the longer arc of healing.
In supervision, I work with social workers and lived experience practitioners who want more than a tick-box arrangement. The work centres reflective practice, ethical complexity, cultural humility, and the sustainability of frontline and senior practice.
My work has been recognised through the AASW National Excellence Awards (Social Worker of the Year, 2025), the WA Mental Health Award (Lived Experience Impact and Inspiration, 2025), the Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Awards (2026, Outstanding Contribution for WA), and the WA Multicultural Awards (Outstanding Individual Achievement, 2026).
I am not Medicare-registered for individual therapy. This is private fee-for-service work, suited to clients who prefer privacy, NDIS participants who are self-managed or plan-managed, and clients whose sessions are purchased by an organisation. I work with people from diverse cultural and faith backgrounds, and I am bilingual in English and Arabic.
If you are unsure whether I am the right person, a free 15-minute video call is available: a conversation about fit, not a session. You can book it, or a first session, directly online.
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Mental Health - Charles Sturt University in 2030
- Graduate Certificate in Mental Health (Credit) - Australian Catholic University in 2023
- Diploma in Psychology (Merit) - Austin Peay State University in 2023
- MicroMasters in Organisational Psychology (High Distinction) - University of Canterbury in 2023
- MicroMasters in Business Leadership (High Distinction) - University of Queensland in 2021
- Master of Social Work (Credit) - Specialisation: Counselling for Loss and Grief - University of New England in 2020
- MBA (Distinction) - Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK in 2014
- Bachelor of Commerce - Specialisation: Accounting - Alexandria University in 2008
