Chances are that you have found your way here after speaking to someone you already know.
This is important, because it suggests that you have started the process of 'doing something
different' and sharing a bit of what is important to you.
Conversations at Family Tree tend to be about stuff that is central to us all: Feelings – whether
consciously known or leaking out in some way, and Relationships – past and present.
The conversations are also about ordinary, everyday events, behaviour and difficulties, which
are part of everyone's lives but can also cause distress – big or small. If it matters to you,
it is worth talking about.
Family Tree is a Mental Health Team set up in 2018 to address the gap in such services in
New Delhi. It is composed of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists who work to support
children, adolescents and families with emotional and relationship difficulties.
It is a self-funded team based out of Safdurjung Enclave and we have seen over 600 children and
adolescents and their parents in the last 8 years. All of our referrals are by word-of-mouth.
Addressing emotional matters takes courage and can take time. You may need to see us
regularly for some weeks/months. During this time, there will be moments when you want to
avoid the emotional hard work and therefore avoid us. Frequently, this happens by
'forgetting' an appointment or not feeling like coming.
We make it easy for you to remember your next appointment with us by trying to keep it at the
same time and day every week. However, it is your responsibility to keep the appointment, since
it is part of you taking care of yourself. Sessions at Family Tree are one hour long, unless
otherwise discussed.
The Team
Nupur Paiva
Nupur D. Paiva is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, Associate Fellow with the British Psychological Society, Child Psychotherapist and mother-of-two, all of which she has worked very hard at. Especially, the two children.
Nupur D. Paiva is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, Associate Fellow with the British Psychological Society, Child Psychotherapist and mother-of-two, all of which she has worked very hard at. Especially, the two children.
She started Family Tree: Child and Adolescent Mental Health team, in 2018 in New Delhi. She taught 'Infant Observation' on the Psychotherapy training course at Ambedkar University, Delhi from 2012-2020. She is regularly invited to write articles on emotional and mental health for national dailies and for discussions on conference panels. You can find a lot of this through a google search.
In 2014 she decided to train further, especially on how to work with hard-to-engage-adolescents, anxiety and depression in young people. She completed a certification in Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. The process of this training took five years of consistent truth-facing and changed her life, making her more courageous. Now she is training others to work with this technique. She is the author of Love & Rage: The Inner Worlds of Children, which was published in 2017, which is very close to her heart and has a lot of detail on what psychotherapy with children looks like. Along with her husband, Richard Paiva, she is a co-founder of The Art of Sport – a development programme for girls, using sport and group therapy.
For her own energy and emotional balance, she likes to dance and though her motor coordination does not approve, she does not let that stop her.
Neha Gupta
The first to join in 2018 was Neha Gupta when Family Tree was a wee tentative experiment. It was with her that we became a team. She and I.
The first to join in 2018 was Neha Gupta when Family Tree was a wee tentative experiment. It was with her that we became a team. She and I.
Neha is a highly trained psychotherapist, holding an MSc in Child & Adolescent Mental Health and Psychological Practice from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a BA (Honours) in Psychology from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. She is psychoanalytically trained at the Psychoanalytic Training and Research Centre (PTRC), Mumbai. Beyond her formal training, it is her deep, intuitive empathy for the emotional worlds of human beings that lies at the heart of her therapeutic work.
She has over 12 years of experience working with children and young adults across diverse settings, including work with children with special developmental needs. Trained in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), Neha has also been working with adults for over six years.
Having recently relocated to Goa, Neha now runs the Family Tree branch based in Panjim.
Outside the therapy room, Neha’s first and enduring love has been animals and she happily identifies as a lifelong dog mom. In recent years, she has discovered a passion for movement, spending much of her free time exploring the limits of her body and deepening the connection between mind and muscle.
Ambika Singh
Ambika Singh is a trained Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist having completed her MPhil from Ambedkar University Delhi; Masters in Psychosocial Clinical Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi; and a Bachelors in Psychology (Honours) from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University.
Ambika Singh is a trained Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist having completed her MPhil from Ambedkar University Delhi; Masters in Psychosocial Clinical Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi; and a Bachelors in Psychology (Honours) from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University.
She joined Family Tree in February 2020 and valiantly worked online with adolescents throughout the lockdown.
Ambika has worked in places few dare to tread - mental health centres in university settings. She has borne the red-tape, the senior administration who don't understand the emotional issues of young people, the high rates of self harm and suicidal thoughts in her clients.
At Family Tree we are grateful to Ambika for her experience and commitment to working on the darkest of real subjects - understanding 'suicidality' and its representations in the Indian context.
She is the author of Interruptions in Identity: Engaging with Suicidality among the Indian Youth, a Sage Yoda Press Publication, August 2021. Framed within the context of the alarming rise of suicide rates in India, her work as a psychotherapist and researcher reflects on the interpersonal nature inherent in feelings of suicidality.
In 2025, she completed the core training in Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy making her an ISTDP Practitioner, certified by the ISTDP Institute, Washington D.C.
When she isn't working, she can be found dancing to 90s music or talking to her plants.
Shweta Dharamdasani
Shweta Dharamdasani who joined us in 2019, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with an MPhil from Ambedkar University, Delhi. She is a researcher and writer, committed to depth thinking and learning, with an interest in how culture and psyche influence each other.
Shweta Dharamdasani who joined us in 2019, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with an MPhil from Ambedkar University, Delhi. She is a researcher and writer, committed to depth thinking and learning, with an interest in how culture and psyche influence each other.
In addition, Shweta has trained at Antarnaad foundation, Ahmadabad and is a RCI certified Rehabilitation Psychologist, all of which makes her a highly prized clinician for Family Tree.
She has been working towards building a vocabulary for doing psychotherapy in Hindi, in an attempt to take psychological work beyond the clinic and the elite, to make it more accessible. She has presented papers in International and National conferences and also published papers in reputed journals and books.
In 2025, she completed the core training in Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy making her an ISTDP Practitioner, certified by the ISTDP Institute, Washington D.C
Much like the children she works with through play and stories, Shweta enjoys craft activities-making things out of waste and scrap. What we appreciate the most though is what she makes out of the distress, anxiety and silence that she works with in her young clients.
Newspaper Prints
Love and Rage
Love & Rage is a book about children, both the child in those of us who are
chronologically adult, as well as the children we may be interacting with. It takes a
reader for a journey into their inner world of intense, raging emotions which often goes
unheeded by the outside adult world. With the trained ear of a child psychotherapist, the
author listens to children's stories as they emerge in her consulting room, through word
and play, and translates them for adults.
Supported by the author's own personal associations and a bedrock of psychodynamic theory,
the book throws light on what comes into a psychotherapist's consulting room, and demonstrates
that it is not unusual, bizarre or crazy. Instead, it is the ordinary stuff of everyday life,
taking place in every family. That sometimes we all carry the pain of complex feelings within
ourselves for all of our lives—love and rage towards the people we are closest to.
This book is essential reading for anyone close to children—parents and parents-to-be, teachers,
school counsellors—but also for anyone looking to attend to the child within them.
Interruptions in Identity: Engaging with Suicidality among the Indian Youth
Interruptions in Identity: Engaging with Suicidality among the Indian Youth explores the
shift in the author's perspective from an understanding of 'suicide' to an exploration of
suicidality. The shift came organically from her experience of working in a university
clinic and interacting with individuals who had communicated to her the presence of
'suicidal thoughts' during their sessions. The work is also an examination of how studying
a tendency towards committing suicide is necessarily an attempt to understand the complex
interplay of the personal and the social which often leads to that tendency described as
suicidality. The work turns a psychosocial lens and further elaborates on how suicidality
expresses itself in the space between the subject and the therapist within the safe space
of a clinic. In taking us through these narratives, the author builds a case that it is
important to reflect not just on the nature of individual suffering but also its
interaction with the prevalent and relevant socio-political forces
When we book an appointment with you, we keep that hour aside for you. If you cannot make it for
some reason, please let us know at least 48 hours in advance so we can offer the time to someone
who is waiting for an appointment.
We charge for missed appointments and cancellations under 48 hrs. We understand that what you
are doing takes courage. We work hard to keep your personal story confidential and do our best
to make you feel safe.
Please note: Our slots are pre-allocated. Slot availability is subject to cancellation and there
is a waitlist.
Once you write to us, we will discuss your request in the team and get back to you with the next
available slot, based on the waitlist.
(Average wait time: one week)
