Dr. Maria Gonaria Demontis is an English-speaking psychologist and licensed psychotherapist in Rome. She receives patients in person in Rome and works online with people living elsewhere in Italy and abroad, in English and Italian, with adults and couples.

Her approach is transcultural, and one part of her practice is unusual enough to state plainly: she offers psychological support through the migration process itself, in both directions. To people who have moved to Italy, and to Italians who have moved abroad. Moving country is not only a logistical event, and the difficulty it produces is often not about the new place at all.

She treats acute anxiety, panic disorder and phobias, trauma and bereavement, and works with addiction. Her description of the work is precise: helping a person identify and manage the factors that keep a state of psychological suffering in place.

Her clinical experience has been built in places where people arrive at their most exposed. She worked for many years with the Telefono Rosa association, supporting women subjected to domestic and gender-based violence, and in a Casa Famiglia, protecting women and children in precarious situations. She then worked in an NGO where psychological support to migrants was one of her main responsibilities, collaborating with local institutions on the most vulnerable cases, including victims of human trafficking and of torture and abuse.

She is a Mindfulness Teacher and a certified MBSR trainer (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), a structured programme with evidence behind it for anxiety and stress, which she can bring into the work when it fits.

Her career began in a different field: she worked as a freelance consultant in HR, recruiting and training, for consulting companies and organisations. It gives her a working knowledge of how organisations actually behave, which is useful when what is grinding a person down is their job rather than their private life.

She lived in Paris, and has close familiarity with South East Asian, African and Chinese cultural contexts. In transcultural work that is the whole point: whether the therapist has to have your background explained to them, or already knows the shape of it.

She is firmly convinced that psychotherapy is an opportunity, not a repair job: a way to get through the difficulties encountered in a life, to strengthen emotional and mental health, and a real chance for personal growth.

You do not have to pick her yourself. At Therapsy every person is matched by a human being, not by an algorithm: our clinical team reads your request, and if Dr. Demontis is the right fit for what you are bringing, they will introduce you. The first call is free, and it is there to check that the fit is real before anything begins.

Fewer than 1 in 100 therapists joins the Therapsy team. Dr. Gonaria Demontis was personally vetted by our Clinical Director, Dr. Francesca A. Boccalari, on three non-negotiable criteria: she shares our values, she speaks at least one language beyond Italian, and she has a physical practice in Rome where you can meet in person, not only online.

Maria Gonaria Demontis does not work alone. She takes part in Therapsy’s internal clinical supervision, a standing group where therapists bring their most demanding cases, train together and ask for help when a situation calls for it. Every therapist in the network, Case Managers included, can turn to our Clinical Director for clinical questions and further training, and Therapsy runs regular professional training with senior therapists and external trainers. Scheduling, invoicing, payments and the rest of the paperwork are handled by Therapsy, so that her time with you stays clinical work and nothing else. On your side, the same platform gives you one place to see your sessions, invoices, payments and documents.

At Therapsy you do not have to pick your therapist from a list: you start by speaking with Dr. Francesca Boccalari, our Clinical Director, who listens to what you are going through and matches you with the therapist she believes is right for you: Maria Gonaria Demontis, or one of her colleagues. Then you have a free introductory call with that therapist, and only after that do you decide whether to start.

And if the fit turns out not to be right, you are not back at square one. Dr. Boccalari and her team find you another therapist inside Therapsy, at no cost, without you having to tell your story from the beginning. Choosing a therapist while you are struggling, in a language that is not your own, is a lot to ask of a person. That is the part we take on.

Dr. Demontis is registered with the Italian Order of Psychologists. She receives in Rome and works online with patients across Italy and abroad.