I am Kruthi Devarakonda, a psychologist born in India and raised in Oman. I found my passion for mental health early in life, shadowing my school psychologist to learn about phobias, and mentoring special needs kids whenever I got the chance in high-school. Since then, I made it my purpose to dedicate myself to learning about psychology and resilience, and gaining culturally sensitive therapeutic skills with hopes of helping those who seek it, especially the marginalized and the misunderstood members of any society. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to finally live my childhood dream!
Having been born in India and growing up in Oman meant that I was aware of the struggles of migrants in a new country from a young age. This instilled in me a desire to help people like my family with their clinical and non-clinical struggles and provide them with mental health support that we wished we had. My pursuit of a career in psychology took me further to Malaysia for my bachelor’s, where I not only got the chance to gain evidence-based therapeutic skills within a classroom setting but also engage in interventions aimed at improving resilience of youth with behavioral problems in Malaysia and India. I then came to the Netherlands to pursue my M.Sc. in Clinical Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and continued my journey in therapy and research with a focus on ‘resilience’ – the skill that I see as the cornerstone to mental health.