Confidential, bespoke psychotherapy in Dubai
Dubai is a particular place in which to seek help. Professional reputation, social visibility and private life are unusually compressed: the business community is tight and the social world is visible. For senior executives, founders, private-wealth families and the wider international community, the difficulty is rarely access to resources. It is finding genuinely specialist, English-speaking psychotherapy that can be undertaken in complete confidence, without exposure and without a record that goes anywhere it should not.
This practice provides exactly that: confidential, one-to-one psychotherapy for private clients in Dubai, by secure video, with Dr Philippe Jacquet, who has 25 years of specialist clinical practice based at Harley Street, London. Every piece of work is a bespoke programme built around the individual, not an off-the-shelf clinic placement. No institution, no waiting list, no group setting.
A tailor-made programme, by a highly trained specialist
What Dubai’s most discerning clients need is not a residential clinic but a single, highly trained practitioner who can deliver institutional-level clinical depth in a completely private setting, on their schedule and in their timezone. Going to a residential clinic means absence, disclosure and exposure; for senior executives in DIFC, founders, private wealth managers and the family members of high-net-worth clients, that path is often simply not viable.
The work here is the alternative: a programme tailored to the person and their situation, conducted in English or French, in complete discretion. Sessions are by encrypted video, fully one-to-one, with no shared records and no institutional involvement.
What is treated
The work spans the full range of adult psychotherapy: depression and low mood, anxiety, trauma and post-traumatic stress (treated with EMDR), stress and burnout, executive-level support around leadership pressure and career transitions, confidential addiction counselling, and relationship difficulties. Within that, there are two areas of particular specialism, both routinely undertreated in high-achieving populations.
Addiction
Dr Jacquet trained at the Hazelden Foundation, the international benchmark in addiction treatment, and for over five years has supervised the clinical teams at PROMIS Recovery Centre and at Cardinal Clinic, a private psychiatric hospital rated Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission. He brings that institutional-level clinical depth to entirely private, one-to-one work.
Alcohol dependency Including high-functioning presentations where professional life appears intact but the relationship with alcohol has crossed a line that cannot be managed privately. This is one of the most common presentations in high-achieving professional communities worldwide.
Cocaine and stimulant addiction Particularly in performance-driven environments where use has become structurally embedded in professional functioning. The clinical complexity here is significant and requires a practitioner who understands the full picture.
Prescription medication dependency Benzodiazepines, opioids, sleep medication, stimulants prescribed for focus or performance. A growing area of unacknowledged clinical need among professionals in high-pressure environments.
Gambling and behavioural addictions Including the patterns of compulsive trading, gambling, sex addiction and process addictions that increasingly affect high-earning individuals with access, anonymity and pressure.
Read more about the practice’s addiction counselling and its specialist areas.
Eating disorders
Dr Jacquet holds a Doctorate of Professional Practice and is the only clinician in Europe to have completed doctoral research specifically on male eating disorders, a presentation routinely missed in high-achieving men. The full range is treated in adults: anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and compulsive exercise.
Read more about eating disorder treatment and male eating disorders.
How it works
Sessions are conducted by encrypted video from Dubai, scheduled around the client’s calendar and respecting Gulf Standard Time, in English or French. The starting point is a single sixty-minute initial consultation to assess the clinical picture and determine whether this is the right fit. There is no obligation beyond that first conversation. Referrals from family members, GPs or private wealth advisors are welcomed.
Philippe Jacquet, qualifications
Integrative psychotherapist and Jungian analyst. Addiction and eating disorder specialist. Hazelden Foundation trained. Over 25 years of clinical practice at Harley Street, London. An EMDR practitioner with over 20 years’ experience. Doctorate of Professional Practice, Europe’s only DProf on male eating disorders. Supervisor of the clinical teams at PROMIS Recovery Centre (London and Kent) and Cardinal Clinic (Windsor, CQC Outstanding). Bilingual practice in English and French.
Lived experience
Philippe Jacquet brings to this work something that no qualification alone can provide: personal lived experience of both addiction and eating disorders. He is in long-term recovery. That experience, alongside Hazelden Foundation training, over 25 years of specialist clinical practice, and roles supervising the clinical teams at PROMIS Recovery Centre and Cardinal Clinic, gives this work a depth of understanding that is genuinely rare in a practitioner at this level.
The Hazelden model has always recognised that lived experience in recovery is not incidental to clinical expertise. It is constitutive of it. A practitioner who has faced these difficulties personally brings a quality of understanding that goes beyond clinical knowledge: they know what is actually happening inside the experience, what makes the difference between treatment that touches the real problem and treatment that does not.
This is not offered as biography. It is offered as the clinical context that explains why the work in this practice reaches where it does.
Looking for a psychotherapist in London? Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP-accredited psychotherapist and Jungian analyst with 25 years of clinical experience at Harley Street and Central London.
The practice also works with clients in Abu Dhabi and across the UAE.
Common questions
Can I recover from addiction without going to rehab?
Recovery takes many paths. Over 25 years I have worked with people carrying enormous professional responsibility (senior executives, business owners, parents) who could not walk away from their lives for weeks to enter a residential programme. Intensive, consistent one-to-one specialist work can help people achieve real and lasting recovery. But the most important thing to understand is this: recovery is a marathon, not a sprint. Long-term recovery requires long-term work, addressing the underlying psychological issues, building emotional regulation, and processing the trauma that the addiction was managing in the first place.
How is seeing a specialist privately different from going to rehab?
One-to-one specialist treatment offers privacy, flexibility, and clinical depth without requiring you to leave your life. There is no group setting, no shared record, no institutional exposure. Sessions work around your schedule and timezone. For many people in senior professional or public positions, this is not a preference but a clinical necessity. That said, residential treatment sometimes becomes essential, if your health is medically compromised and you require clinical supervision through a severe detox, that need takes precedence. One-to-one specialist work and residential treatment are not opposites. They serve different situations, and sometimes they work in sequence.
Are sessions confidential, and in English?
Strictly confidential, one-to-one, by secure encrypted video, in English or French. Nothing is shared with any third party without your explicit consent.