Dr. Camilla Ballerini

Dr. Camilla Ballerini is an English and Italian-speaking psychologist and 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 people from 16 years old onwards, with couples and with parents.

She has over ten years of experience across both public and private services, and currently works at a private medical centre in Rome alongside her practice with Therapsy.

Her academic path began in Florence, in Clinical and Community Psychology. She then graduated with honours from the University of Turin in Criminal and Investigative Psychology, and completed her specialisation in psychotherapy, again with honours, at the Cognitive Post-Rationalist Psychotherapy School in Rome.

Much of her clinical experience comes from settings most therapists never work in: leading group therapy for people who have lost a close relative to suicide, supporting psychiatric patients in alternative detention regimes, and treating severe psychopathology in public mental health services. That matters for an ordinary patient in a specific way: someone who has sat with people at their worst is unlikely to be unsettled by what you are about to say.

Her approach is cognitive post-rationalist, and it rests on a conviction she states plainly: the essence of psychotherapy lies in the uniqueness of the individual, who can never be reduced to a category or a diagnosis. In practice that means each case is studied carefully before the work is shaped around it, rather than the person being fitted to a protocol.

She works with eating disorders, gender identity and gender dysphoria, and burnout. On gender, the work is not about questioning who someone is: it is about having somewhere to think, in your own language, with a therapist who treats your account of yourself as the starting point rather than the thing to be assessed.

She also works with couples, with families, and with parents, through couples therapy, parent training and psychological support for parents. Support for parents is listed separately from the work with the child, and deliberately so: being the parent of someone in difficulty is itself a position that needs somewhere to be handled.

Dr. Ballerini comes from a multilingual family: her mother is English and half Spanish, and being an expat is part of her family’s own history rather than something she has read about. She is also familiar with what it means for different religions to live side by side, and with the prejudice that comes with it. In her clinical practice this has meant helping patients from other cultures get past the language barrier and reach psychological support at all.

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. Ballerini 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. Ballerini 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.

Camilla Ballerini 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: Camilla Ballerini, 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. Ballerini is registered with the Italian Order of Psychologists. She receives in Rome and works online with patients across Italy and abroad.