Get Better, Together
Grouport connects Timorese clients with small, licensed-therapist-led group sessions over secure video for $32 a session, billed in the same US dollars already used at every counter in Dili. No trip to Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares, no 15-week wait for a specialist appointment, no reliance on the two-per-hundred-thousand mental health workforce concentrated in the capital. You join a group right away after intake and meet weekly with six to twelve peers, in English, from anywhere in Dili, Baucau, Maliana, or the Australian and Portuguese diaspora abroad.

Understanding the landscape of mental health care access and the challenges
residents face across the state.
2.1 per 100,000 mental health workers in Timor-Leste, one of the lowest ratios reported across the WHO Southeast Asia region.
67% of Timorese live outside urban areas, in mountainous rural districts with limited road access to the Dili specialist network.
$4,200 estimated median household income in Timor-Leste (World Bank lower-middle income), shaping what households can allocate to private mental health care.
$0 public mental health care is largely free at the point of use, yet remains geographically concentrated at a single national referral hospital.
15 weeks the reported wait for a specialist mental health appointment through the Ministry of Health referral network centered on Dili.
0 dedicated psychiatric hospitals in Timor-Leste, with services delivered instead through Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares and municipal community nurses.
These figures reflect the Ministry of Health's National Mental Health Strategy documentation and the WHO Global Health Observatory's country profile for Timor-Leste. They describe a young nation that has built a national mental health strategy from a very thin baseline, where 2.1 mental health workers per 100,000 people must cover roughly 1.4 million residents spread across thirteen municipalities and a mountainous interior. The gap is not policy will, it is workforce density and geography.
UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGE
Timor-Leste operates a public mental health system under the Ministry of Health's National Mental Health Strategy, with the great majority of specialist capacity attached to Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares in Dili and a small network of community mental health nurses linked to municipal referral hospitals in places like Baucau, Maliana, Suai, and Oecusse. There is no dedicated psychiatric hospital and no compulsory social health insurance scheme. Care is largely free at the point of use, but that means the constraint moves from price to capacity, and capacity sits at 2.1 workers per 100,000 people.
The practical result is a 15-week wait for a specialist appointment reported through the Ministry referral pathway, and that number assumes the client already lives close enough to Dili to attend. For a resident of Ainaro, Viqueque, or the Oecusse enclave, the appointment itself may require an overnight trip, a Timor Sea crossing, or a full day on unsealed roads through the central mountains. Community mental health nurses do good work in the municipalities they cover, but they are few and their scope is generalist, not specialist group facilitation for anxiety, trauma, or depression.
Online group therapy addresses the specific structural gap in Timorese mental health provision without duplicating what the Ministry already does. Groups of six to twelve peers meet weekly over video with a licensed therapist facilitating. The model fits the Timorese client who is on a Dili waiting list, who lives in a rural district that a community mental health nurse visits only occasionally, or who is part of the Timorese diaspora in Australia, Portugal, Ireland, or the UK and wants to work through something in English or alongside compatriots elsewhere.
15 weeks the reported wait for a specialist mental health appointment through the Ministry of Health referral network centered on Dili.
Grouport's intake is quick and members join a group right away because there is no domestic licensing gate on the client side and no need for a Ministry referral letter. Sessions run over HIPAA-compliant video, so a client in Dili, in a mountain district like Ermera, or in a Melbourne suburb with a Timorese community all sit in the same virtual room. Pricing is in US dollars, the currency Timor-Leste adopted in 2000 during the UN transitional administration, so there is no exchange-rate friction when paying. Delivery is in English, which is one of the constitutionally recognized working languages and is functional for a growing share of urban Timorese, university graduates, NGO staff, and Australian returnees.
Access in Timor-Leste is shaped by three overlapping realities: a very small specialist workforce, a mountainous geography that concentrates services in Dili, and a young state that has built its mental health strategy essentially from scratch since 2002. The Ministry of Health has done meaningful work under difficult conditions, and yet the arithmetic of 2.1 mental health workers per 100,000 people leaves most Timorese without a realistic path to specialist care within their own municipality.
Against the middle-low income context of Timor-Leste, $140 a month is not a trivial line item and it is not intended to compete on price with the free public system at Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares. It is intended to undercut the effective cost of private counseling in Dili, where NGO and independent providers can charge per-session fees that add up quickly, and to offer a predictable flat monthly figure rather than an open-ended fee-per-visit structure. For diaspora Timorese in Australia or Portugal, $32 a session sits well below the local market rate for licensed therapy in either country.
For a client outside Dili, the sticker price on a specialist appointment is only a small part of the real cost. Fuel or bus fare across the central mountains, an overnight stay in Dili if the appointment is early or the return trip is long, lost income from a day or more away from farming or informal work, and in the case of the Oecusse enclave a Timor Sea crossing or a road transit through Indonesian West Timor all sit on top of the nominally free consultation. A weekly video group removes every one of those line items, which for a rural or enclave client can exceed the session fee itself.
The immediate group start is the second half of the value proposition. In a country where the practical alternative is a 15-week specialist wait and a trip to Dili, the ability to be in a group within days reframes what the money is buying. It is not just a lower price than private Dili counseling, it is access on a fundamentally different timeline than either the public referral pathway or the community nurse rotation can currently offer.
Timor-Leste uses the US dollar as its official currency, adopted in 2000 during the UN transitional administration, which means Grouport's $32 per session and $140 per month prices are the same numbers a Timorese client would see on any Dili shop receipt, with no exchange-rate friction, no conversion fee at the bank, and no monthly surprise from a fluctuating cross rate. That currency alignment is unusual in the region and it simplifies the household budgeting question considerably.
Choose your desired online therapy group and sign up for our weekly plan. Most of our groups are $35/session, but our skills groups are $25/session.
We’ll ensure you're matched to an online therapy group that best fits your mental health challenges and schedule. Don’t worry if you’re not entirely sure which group is right for you, as after signing up, a care coordinator can help make sure you get started in the group that’s right for you. We typically match you to a group right away!
Join your group over video chat at the same time each week for 60-minute sessions. You’ll meet with the same members & therapist with a group of up to 12 members. Additional membership perks can include weekly handouts, symptom tracking, and one-off workshops.
Grouport runs weekly groups for anxiety, depression, DBT skills, grief and loss, relationship issues, OCD, PTSD and trauma processing, ADHD, chronic pain and illness, LGBTQIA+ experience, and parenting. These presentations map onto what Timorese community mental health nurses and NGO counselors most often encounter, including the intergenerational trauma legacy of the 1975 to 1999 period, adjustment issues among returnees from Australian seasonal-worker pathways, and anxiety and depression among urban Dili professionals working through career and family pressures.
Relationship Issues, Codependency, Attachment Issues, Divorce, Loneliness, Anger Management, Self-Esteem, Grief & Loss, Chronic Illness, Gender Dysphoria, Infertility, Fertility Treatment & IVF Support, Pregnancy Loss & Miscarriage, Couples Issues, Parenting, Supporting a loved one, LGBTQIA Support
Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Self-injury, Suicide Survival
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure Response Prevention (ERP), Exposure Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR), Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), Psychodynamic Therapy, Motivational Interviewing (MI), Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT), Narrative Therapy, Schema Therapy, Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), Somatic Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), Behavioral Activation

Our therapists represent a wide range of clinical specialties & diverse backgrounds. They all undergo the most stringent credentialing process. Grouport therapists are caring, expert mental health professionals with years of experience helping people get the tools they need to see long-lasting change.
Grouport therapists are licensed clinicians, working in English, with experience running virtual groups for internationally distributed cohorts. For Timorese clients this means sessions in one of the country's four constitutionally recognized languages, delivered by clinicians who are used to time-zone coordination with the Southeast Asia region and with diaspora communities in Australia. Because the format is group rather than one-to-one, cultural context is built collaboratively by the Timorese participants themselves alongside the facilitator, which fits a communal, discussion-oriented approach to sharing that is already familiar in Timorese daily life.
a healthier future starts right here
80% of our members start with moderate to severe mental health symptoms
70% of our members feel significantly better within just 8 weeks
50% of our members achieve remission levels within just 8 weeks
80%
of our members start with moderate to severe mental health symptoms
70%
of our members feel significantly better within just 8 weeks
50%
of our members achieve remission levels within just 8 weeks
Find your Group

Group, individual, couples, family, IOP, and teen therapy — all online, all therapist-led. Mix and match care options to fit your needs — and get discounted pricing when you bundle.
$35/session
billed at $140/month
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Check out how our services have helped our members see life-changing results
Stephanie

“Grouport is time flexible and affordable and if it didn’t exist, I don’t know where I would go. I had looked into other places before Grouport and there really wasn’t any option like it.”
Michael

“I highly recommend this to anyone who is struggling with anxiety or depression. The therapists are top notch and have made me feel really comfortable and my anxiety has improved tremendously in only a few sessions!”
Isabel

"I joined Grouport to work on myself and to heal. I’m learning so much at every session! The change I see not only in myself but in my fellow group members is abundantly encouraging and profoundly fulfilling. Group therapy with Grouport is a powerful healing tool."
Sheldon

“I was feeling very down at the end of 2020 and I was ready to do something drastic that I know I'd likely regret. The group definitely helped show me that there are people who feel the same way as I do.”
Nancy

“The therapy from Grouport is high quality and convenient. I am becoming much more self aware and am liking myself more. My relationships at work are better and I’m much happier.”
Emily

“I like the connection you can make with total strangers and the confidentiality it comes with.”
Danielle

"Grouport can help you with your issues. Their therapists are well trained to work with you on your issues. I felt my anxiety greatly improve after only a few sessions. I highly recommend it!"
Glenn

"Grouport's approach to DBT is a real strength. This approach provides tools and methods for working with difficult emotions and getting a handle on them. It has given me hope where other approaches have failed."
Because Timor-Leste already uses the US dollar as its official currency, there is no conversion math: group therapy is $35 per week and individual therapy is $85 per session, billed exactly as listed. Groups run on US Eastern Time, so most sessions land in the late evening or early morning in Dili (TLT, UTC+9). We publish the weekly schedule in your local time once you join right away, so you can pick a group that fits your work hours.
Timor-Leste's public system, anchored at HNGV in Dili and a small network of community mental health nurses at municipal referral hospitals, focuses primarily on medication management and acute psychiatric care. Grouport is different: we run weekly online group therapy in English, led by licensed therapists, using structured DBT, CBT, and process-group formats. We do not replace local psychiatric care or prescribe medication, but we fill the talk-therapy gap that is scarce nationwide, especially outside Dili.
Dili, Baucau, Bobonaro, Ainaro, Manufahi, Manatuto, Viqueque, Lautem, Ermera, Liquica, Aileu, Covalima, Oecusse
Dili, Baucau, Maliana, Suai, Same, Ainaro, Lospalos, Viqueque, Manatuto, Pante Macassar, Gleno, Liquica, Aileu, Ermera, Bobonaro
Grouport serves all zip codes across Timor-Leste. If you have an address in Timor-Leste, Grouport can serve you regardless of your zip code.
Let’s find the right therapist match for you, so you can get consistent & effective care.
