ACA Registered Counsellor · Online · English & Hindi
Mrugank Patel — therapist, former IT consultant, and someone who has lived the life you’re navigating.
Stress Management Workshop · Rotary Club of Altona City · Melbourne
How I got here
I didn’t find therapy in a classroom. I found it when I needed it.
For 12 years I worked as an IT consultant for Fortune 500 companies in Melbourne. Good salary, interesting work, and a level of stress I kept telling myself was normal. It wasn’t. Burnout arrived without warning — not dramatically, but quietly. The kind that makes you realise you’ve been running on empty for a long time and calling it ambition.
I found my way through with the help of good therapy and evidence-based psychological tools. What struck me wasn’t just that it worked — it was how long I had waited before asking for help, and how unnecessary that wait had been. I spent three years studying psychotherapy formally in Australia, became certified with the Australian Counselling Association, and built a practice around the people I understood best.
“I know what it feels like to hold everything together on the outside while something quieter is falling apart inside. That’s not a tagline — it’s what brought me here.”
The origin of ValueTherapy
A room full of people who had everything — except someone to talk to.
In June 2024, I ran a Stress Management workshop at the Rotary Club of Altona City in Melbourne. The room was full of well-established professionals — people who, from the outside, had built successful lives in Australia. What they shared privately was different. Loneliness. Financial pressure. Relationship strain. The weight of holding two cultures simultaneously.
The barriers they described were the same ones I’d heard for years: the cost of private therapy, the months-long waitlist, the fear that asking for help was somehow a failure. And underneath all of it — the specific, unspoken anxiety that many Indian migrants carry: that seeking help might somehow affect their visa, their standing, or what their family would think. ValueTherapy was created to remove every single one of those barriers.
Affordable pricing
Sessions from $49.99 — no Medicare, no GP referral, no waitlist.
Culturally safe
A therapist who understands Indian culture, family dynamics, and the migrant experience from the inside.
Fully private
Sessions are 100% confidential. Your visa and immigration status are completely unaffected.
My approach
Evidence-based — and culturally grounded.
I work primarily with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and mindfulness-based approaches. These are among the most rigorously researched therapeutic frameworks available. But I apply them differently than most Western-trained therapists would.
Most CBT is designed around individual autonomy — the idea that your own needs and boundaries come first. That framework can feel alienating if you come from a culture where family duty, collective harmony, and intergenerational obligation are genuine values, not obstacles to overcome. I don’t ask you to choose between your wellbeing and your family’s expectations. I help you find a way to honour both — and to build the psychological resilience to carry what you carry, without it breaking you.
Qualifications & training
The training behind the practice.
If any of this resonates — let’s talk.
The first conversation is free. No commitment, no forms, no pressure.
30 minutes · Completely confidential · English or Hindi