Counselor, Social Worker and Therapist
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 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.
Many people I work with are capable, thoughtful, and exhausted from holding it together for a long time. They are living with anxiety, grief, the long aftermath of trauma, or the quiet disconnection that comes from carrying more than felt sustainable. Couples come looking for somewhere to put down the weight of recurring conflict, distance, or ruptures that have not healed on their own. Many have had therapy before that did not quite reach them.
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 or are funded through NDIS, EAP, Workcover, DVA, or family violence brokerage. I work with people from diverse cultural and faith backgrounds, and I am bilingual in English and Arabic.
If you are looking for a practitioner who is thoughtful, direct, and grounded; who will not rush to fix or override your experience; you are welcome to reach out.
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Mental Health - Charles Sturt University in 2028
- 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
