Katarzyna Akhtar

Special fields: Psychoanalysis, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Age groups: Adults

Consultations in English, Polish

Katarzyna is an experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a clinical supervisor. 

She works with adults and provides therapy on a long-term basis and brief therapeutic interventions. She specialises in the treatment of a range of clinical presentations, including anxiety and depression, loss, personality difficulties, intimacy and relationship issues and life transitions. Her particular interest lies in the work with trauma and psycho-somatic health.

She is a co-director of the United in Crisis Association, a non-profit organisation, which provides free of charge mental health support for the refugees and asylum seekers from Ukraine. This is where she also supervises other psychotherapists and trainee clinicians.

Main Areas of Interest: Trauma, psycho-somatic health, mood disorders and personality disorder.


Academic Training and Professional Experience

Katarzyna trained at the Tavistock Clinic and the Society of Analytic Psychology in London. Alongside her private practice based in Lisbon, she is a co-director of the ‘United in Crisis Association’. 

She has over twenty years of experience of working therapeutically with individuals and groups in a variety of mental health settings, in which she worked with adults, children and young people and their families. She has a background of working as a psychotherapist in both, Camden & Islington and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts. 

Whilst living in the UAE, she wrote and coordinated a psycho-educational programme to teach and promote the practice of mindfulness to build reflective awareness and conscious growth. She used her deep understanding of the destructive impact of stress, which could result in addictive/obsessive behaviours and increased anxiety. She continues to deliver my programmes internationally and bring this breadth of experience to her current psychotherapy practice. 

In collaboration with other mental health clinicians, she founded ‘Wellness PitStop’ a mental health and well-being consultancy service. We offered individual consultations and delivered workshops to organisations where they provided psychological guidance and education to reduce workplace stress and promote work/stress balance. 

She is an accredited member and abide by the code of ethics of the

BPC (British Psychoanalytical Council), Registration Number: 24132 and 

TSP (Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists), Registration Number: 33067