Living abroad can be rewarding and lonely at the same time, often in the same week. Many Pakistanis in the Gulf, the UK and the USA would rather speak to someone who already understands the family and cultural context they are describing, instead of having to explain it before they can begin. Dr. Saira Farhan sees overseas patients by secure online video from Karachi, Pakistan, drawing on more than five years practising in Saudi Arabia.
What online care with a Pakistani psychiatrist involves
Appointments are held by secure video, one to one, from wherever you are. They cover the same ground as an in-person consultation in Karachi: your history, how you have been sleeping and functioning, what has changed, and what would help.
Depending on what you are dealing with, this may involve talking therapy, practical strategies for stress and low mood, a discussion of medication where that is appropriate, or a combination. Adults and adolescents are both seen.
What often matters most is not needing to give a cultural briefing first. Expectations from home, the weight of being the one who went abroad, and the way distress gets described within Pakistani families are already familiar ground.
Who this is for
Overseas patients come with the ordinary difficulties of life abroad as well as clinical ones. You may recognise some of the following:
- Isolation — long working hours, few close friends, no one to call at 2am
- Feeling caught between two cultures, and fully at home in neither
- Guilt about ageing parents or unwell relatives in Pakistan
- Pressure to appear successful, or to keep sending money home
- Anxiety, panic attacks, low mood, or sleep that has not been right for months
- Burnout, or the flat exhaustion that follows years of holding everything together
- Struggling to find a clinician abroad who grasps the cultural context, or long waiting lists
- Difficulty describing how you feel in a second language
- Worry about a family member back home whom you cannot easily reach
Students, new migrants and long-settled families are all seen, as are people who moved for work and never quite settled.
How Dr. Saira Farhan approaches it
Dr. Saira Farhan is a female psychiatrist with MBBS and FCPS (Psychiatry), PMDC-verified, and an Associate Professor at Hamdard University. She also holds an Advanced Diploma in Humanistic Integrative Counselling from the UK and is BACP-accredited, so sessions are conversational rather than a checklist of symptoms.
Her five years practising in Saudi Arabia gave her direct experience of what expatriate life asks of people: distance from family, uncertain status, and support networks that have to be built from nothing. Over 13 years and more than 1,000 patients — in Karachi, across Pakistan, and among Pakistanis in the USA, the UK and Saudi Arabia — she has heard many versions of that experience.
She is also mindful that mental health still carries real stigma in many households, and that being seen entering a clinic is itself a worry for some people. Consulting privately from home removes that obstacle. Nothing is shared with your family without your consent.
How online sessions work, and their limits
Appointments are booked in Pakistan Standard Time and confirmed in your local time, with early morning or later evening slots available for the USA, the UK and the Gulf. You will receive a secure video link; you need only a private space and a reasonable connection.
It is worth being honest about prescribing across borders. A prescription issued in Pakistan is not always valid where you live, and pharmacy regulations differ between the UK, the USA, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Where medication is part of the picture, Dr. Saira Farhan can put her assessment and recommendations in writing so that a local prescriber — a GP, family doctor or psychiatrist where you live — can consider actioning them. She will say clearly at the outset if that is likely to apply to you.
Online care also has clinical limits. If you are seriously unwell or at risk, you need local, in-person help, and she will tell you so directly and help you think about where to turn.
If you are already under treatment abroad and would like an independent review, see Second Opinion & Medication Review. Online Consultations sets out how video appointments work more generally.
Booking from abroad
Consultations are Rs. 6,000 and last 25–30 minutes. Follow-up appointments are arranged at whatever interval suits you, which for overseas patients is often monthly.
To book, message WhatsApp +92 321 5588832 with your city and time zone, and a suitable slot will be suggested. If you are visiting Pakistan, in-person appointments are available at Bahria International Hospital and Medi Health Care Center, both in Bahria Town, Karachi, and you can continue online once you travel back.