Virtual Therapy · Serving Ontario
TEO Counselling Services provides online therapy to adults and couples across Ontario — Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, Hamilton, London, and everywhere in between. No commutes and no waiting rooms: meet with your therapist from wherever you feel comfortable.
Free initial consultation · No referral needed · Seven days a week
Online therapy in Ontario, at a glance. TEO Counselling provides online therapy across Ontario with two Ontario-registered clinicians — Mohamad Shabib, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO (#14298), and Rola Shbib, a Registered Social Worker with the OCSWSSW (#866715). Appointments run 3:00 pm to midnight Eastern, seven days a week, so evening and weekend sessions are routine. Individual sessions are $150 and couples sessions $175, each 60 minutes; OHIP does not cover psychotherapy in private practice, every session comes with an insurance-ready receipt, and direct billing is available with Mohamad for Pacific Blue Cross and TELUS eClaims plans (Canada Life, Manulife). Coverage depends on the credentials your plan recognizes — check for Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) or Registered Social Worker. The first step is a free 15-minute consultation.
Two clinicians serve Ontario. Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO), with sessions in English or Arabic. He is joined by Rola Shbib, BSW (Hons), RSW, a Registered Social Worker with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers based in London, whose focus spans crisis support, grief and loss, anxiety, and addictions. Their full training — and how the clinical-supervision arrangement works for a Qualifying registrant — is covered under "Who you would be working with" further down this page.
The call is with Mohamad Shabib, who founded the practice, or with Rola Shbib. Whoever takes it answers your questions, tells you what the work would involve, and there is nothing to pay and nothing to commit to.
On that call you are matched with the clinician who fits what you bring, your province (Ontario) and your language — Mohamad, Rola Shbib, or Alison Shaji if you are in British Columbia. If you already know who you would rather work with, say so and it is arranged.
Online, at a time you pick — evenings and weekends included. Individual sessions are $150 and couples sessions $175, each 60 minutes, with an insurance-ready receipt afterwards.
$150 individual · $175 couples · 60 minutes · direct billing with Pacific Blue Cross and TELUS eClaims plans (Canada Life, Manulife); an insurance-ready receipt for every other plan. Fees & insurance · Direct billing
Trauma and PTSD therapy, including EMDR and Internal Family Systems
Couples counselling using the Gottman Method — see online couples counselling in Ontario
Anxiety, stress, and burnout
Faith-informed and spiritually integrated therapy, including support for Muslim clients. Muslim clients in Ontario can also start from our national Muslim therapist page, which explains how faith is brought into sessions and who provides them across the six provinces we serve.
Newcomer, immigrant, and second-generation identity challenges
Head-to-head research comparing video-delivered psychotherapy with office-based care — including pooled analyses of direct comparisons — has tended to find comparable results across common concerns such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. One example is a 2021 meta-analysis in Clinical Psychology Review, which pooled several dozen studies of videoconferenced mental health care and reported treatment effects largely equivalent to office-based delivery, while noting how few of those studies were randomised trials. The working relationship with your therapist matters more than the room it happens in, and that relationship forms online.
Online sessions also mean you can keep the same therapist whether you live in downtown Toronto or a small northern community — and appointments fit around work and family instead of traffic. Whether the format suits you personally is exactly what a free 15-minute consultation is for.
Psychotherapy is a controlled act in Ontario, and the title "psychotherapist" is restricted under the Psychotherapy Act, 2007 — performing the act requires registration with one of the province's regulated colleges — but "therapist" and "counsellor" on their own are not protected titles, which is exactly why the public registers are worth checking. Both TEO clinicians serving Ontario can be looked up in about two minutes: Mohamad (CRPO #14298) on the CRPO public register, and Rola (RSW #866715) on the OCSWSSW online register. That check is worth doing for any therapist you are considering, including us.
What no register can tell you is fit — whether you can actually talk to this person — and that is what the free 15-minute consultation is for. For a fuller walkthrough of weighing the province's options, our guide to online counselling in Ontario goes deeper.
"Online psychologist Ontario" and "virtual psychologist Ontario" are ways people search for this, and the three titles are not interchangeable in Ontario, so it is worth knowing what each one means before you book.
A psychologist is registered with the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario. Psychologists can carry out psychological assessment and communicate a diagnosis, which may be the practical difference you are looking for when you use the word. TEO does not employ a psychologist, does not provide psychological assessments, and does not diagnose. If an assessment or a diagnosis is what you need — for a school, a workplace accommodation, an insurer or a court — a psychologist is the right door, and the honest answer is that this is not the place for it.
A Registered Psychotherapist is registered with the CRPO and performs the controlled act of psychotherapy. Mohamad Shabib holds the Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) category, which means he practises under clinical supervision — a second experienced clinician involved in the oversight of your care. A Registered Social Worker is registered with the OCSWSSW; social workers are also recognised to provide psychotherapy in Ontario, and Rola Shbib is registered there.
For talking therapy itself — trauma work, couples work, anxiety, depression, grief — all three can do the work, and a practical question is which designation your extended health plan names in its booklet. Read the wording rather than the summary page, and check the person on their college's public register whichever title they use. Our province-by-province regulation reference sets out who registers whom, and our direct-billing page explains which plans can be billed on your behalf.
Ontario is the one province where two TEO clinicians are registered, so you can be matched rather than simply assigned.
Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) — this is his own college’s province. His training covers Advanced EMDR through an EMDRIA-approved programme, Internal Family Systems Levels 1 and 2, the Gottman Method Levels 1 and 2, and CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2, alongside concurrent trauma and addictions experience. Sessions in English or Arabic. If EMDR is the approach you are considering, our EMDR therapy online in Ontario page explains how the method works. As a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) he practises with clinical supervision — a second experienced clinician involved in the oversight of your care.
Rola Shbib, BSW (Hons), RSW is a Registered Social Worker with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers, and she lives in Ontario herself. Her background spans crisis intervention and suicide-prevention work, addictions, and grief and loss — she holds an honours degree in thanatology, the study of death, dying and bereavement. Sessions in English.
Which of them you see depends on what you are bringing and who has room, and that gets settled on the free consultation call rather than guessed at here.
Side by side, with the registration numbers you can check yourself.
MACP, CCC · Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO — Ontario · Founder
Trauma and PTSD (EMDR-trained through an EMDRIA-approved program, IFS Levels 1–2), couples work (Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy), critical-incident and crisis response, concurrent trauma and addictions experience.
Choose Mohamad for trauma and EMDR work, couples counselling, critical-incident and crisis support, or sessions in Arabic — anywhere in the six provinces.
Book a free 15-minute consultationBSW (Hons) · RSW (Ontario), OCSWSSW
Grief and bereavement (BA Thanatology, Hons), crisis intervention and suicide prevention, addictions and mental health support; ASIST and MHFA facilitator.
Choose Rola for grief and bereavement, crisis support, or addictions work. Sessions with Rola are paid per session with an insurance-ready receipt rather than direct billed.
Book a free 15-minute consultationThe booking link goes to Mohamad Shabib, who founded the practice — one link rather than three. The consultation is with Mohamad or with Rola Shbib, and you are then booked with the clinician who fits. Read more about the practice.
Individual therapy is $150 per 60-minute session. Couples counselling is $175. The first conversation — a free 15-minute consultation, to work out whether this is a good fit — costs nothing, and no referral is needed to book it.
OHIP does not cover psychotherapy in private practice, anywhere in Ontario — worth saying plainly. What can cover it is an extended health plan through work: coverage depends on the credentials your plan recognizes — check for Registered Psychotherapist or Registered Social Worker, both of which are represented here. Amounts and wording differ between plans, so read the booklet for the designation it names. One honest caveat: a few plans reimburse only fully registered RPs rather than the Qualifying category, so if your booklet says "Registered Psychotherapist," it is worth confirming that RP (Qualifying) sessions qualify — the receipt states the designation either way, and our guide to RP vs RP (Qualifying) explains the difference.
You receive an insurance-ready receipt after every session. A small number of reduced-fee spots are held — if cost is the thing standing in the way, say so on the consultation call.
Subscription therapy apps match you with a counsellor from a large pool; a private practice starts the other way around, with a specific clinician you choose and can verify on a public register before booking. Sessions here are scheduled appointments with the same person each time, run as video calls on Jane, and every session produces a receipt naming a designation — Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) or Registered Social Worker — that your extended health plan can assess.
Apps can cost less, and some app counsellors are Ontario-registered too, so the honest difference is not the quality of the person — it is choice, continuity, and how cleanly the paperwork fits Ontario insurance. The right door depends on your budget and what you are carrying.
If private therapy is out of reach right now, Ontario has real alternatives. The Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program, run through Ontario Health, offers free, publicly funded CBT-based care for depression and anxiety-related concerns, through self-referral or a referral from a primary-care provider; CMHA branches run free and low-cost programmes; many workplaces include an employee assistance programme with a handful of no-cost sessions; and ConnexOntario (1-866-531-2600) can point you to services in your region around the clock, free of charge.
BounceBack Ontario, delivered by the Canadian Mental Health Association and listed by Ontario Health among the Structured Psychotherapy Program's services, pairs free phone coaching with workbooks and online videos for anxiety, stress and low mood, and is open to Ontarians aged 15 and over. Sign-up is online and needs no doctor's referral; questions about a referral go to 1-866-345-0224.
These routes tend to involve more waiting and less choice of clinician than private practice — that is the honest trade. A small number of reduced-fee spots are also held here, and our guide to affordable therapy in Ontario maps the full landscape, while our free and low-cost counselling directory gives each Ontario program's eligibility, cost and way in, checked on the provider's own website.
Sessions run from the Pacific coast, and Ontario is three hours ahead. That puts appointments between 3:00 pm and midnight Ontario time, seven days a week.
That is an unusual shape for a therapy practice and it is the most useful thing on this page for some people. Appointments starting at nine, ten or eleven at night are ordinary here rather than a special arrangement — which matters if you work rotating shifts, if you are only free once the children are asleep, or if leaving the office for a mid-afternoon appointment was never realistic.
The trade-off is honest: mornings are not available. Nothing starts before three in the afternoon your time. If your only workable hours are before lunch, this is not the right practice for you, and it is better to know that now than after a booking.
The free consultation is a conversation, not an assessment. You describe what is going on in whatever order it comes out, and you get a straight answer about whether this is the right kind of help — including if the honest answer is that someone else would be a better fit.
The first full session is mostly history and direction: what brought you here, what has already been tried, what you want to be different. Nothing is dug into before you are ready, and structured trauma work in particular does not begin until there is enough stability and enough trust in the room to make it worth doing.
From there the pace is yours. Some people come weekly for a few months and stop; others come fortnightly for longer. There is no package to sign and no minimum number of sessions.
What you say in session is kept confidential, with the limits every Canadian therapist works under: a risk of serious harm to you or someone else, a child in need of protection, a court order or subpoena, and the reporting obligations a regulator can impose. Those limits are explained in full in the first session, before anything sensitive is discussed.
Sessions run as video calls through Jane, a Canadian practice-management platform, with Zoom or Google Meet as a backup. You get a link, find a private spot, and the rest works like therapy in a room — including the plan for a dropped connection, agreed before it is ever needed. For the minute-by-minute picture, the walkthrough What Happens in an Online Therapy Session covers it from the link in your inbox onward, and what to expect from online therapy sets out the consultation, the first session and the paperwork in the order they actually happen.
No. TEO Counselling is an online-only practice based in Nanaimo, British Columbia, so there is no office in Ontario; the two clinicians who see Ontario clients both hold Ontario registrations. Someone in Thunder Bay or Kingston gets the same access as someone in Toronto, and it is why there is currently no waitlist.
Not in private practice — psychotherapy from an RP or RSW in private practice is not covered by OHIP anywhere in Ontario. The publicly funded exceptions are physician-delivered care and programs like the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program. Otherwise, coverage comes through an extended health plan, an employee assistance programme, or private payment. Coverage depends on the credentials your plan recognizes — Mohamad is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO and Rola is a Registered Social Worker with the OCSWSSW, so check which of those your plan names.
Sessions run until midnight Eastern time, seven days a week, because the practice operates on Pacific hours. Late-evening appointments are ordinary rather than exceptional. Mornings are not available — nothing starts before 3:00 pm your time.
Yes, with Mohamad Shabib, who works in English or Arabic — and you can move between the two mid-session if that is how the words arrive. Rola Shbib works in English.
They are two separate Ontario colleges with different training routes, and both are recognised to provide psychotherapy in the province. In practice the difference that matters to you is what your insurance plan names and which clinician fits what you are bringing. That gets sorted on the consultation call.
Individual therapy is $150 and couples counselling is $175, per 60-minute session, and the initial 15-minute consultation is free. OHIP does not cover psychotherapy in private practice; coverage depends on the credentials your plan recognizes — check for Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) or Registered Social Worker — and you receive a receipt after every session.
In Ontario the words are used almost interchangeably — but only some of them are protected. Psychotherapy is a controlled act and "psychotherapist" is a restricted title, while anyone may offer "counselling" without being registered at all. That is why the label matters less than the register: check that the person is registered with an Ontario college, whichever word their website uses.
Apps match you with a counsellor from a pool and can cost less; a private practice starts with a specific clinician you chose yourself and verified on a public register before booking. Some app counsellors are Ontario-registered too, and the register check works either way — the practical differences are choice, continuity, and how cleanly the receipt fits your extended health plan. The free 15-minute consultation exists so you can test that difference before spending anything.
Yes. The Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program offers free CBT-based care to adults 18 and older with depression or anxiety-related concerns, BounceBack Ontario offers free phone coaching to anyone in Ontario aged 15 or older with no referral, and ConnexOntario (1-866-531-2600) can point you to local services at any hour. TEO's own sessions are private-pay, after a free 15-minute consultation.
Yes, with Mohamad Shabib. Direct billing is available with him for Pacific Blue Cross and for plans on the TELUS eClaims network, including Canada Life and Manulife — where your plan is one we can bill, you pay only the portion it does not cover. Rola Shbib is not on the direct-bill line; with her you pay per session and submit the receipt. Either way an insurance-ready receipt follows every session, and coverage depends on the credentials your plan recognizes — check for Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) or Registered Social Worker.
That depends on what you need from the hour. Online sessions remove the commute and open up evenings, you keep the same clinician wherever you are in the province, and the working relationship that carries the therapy is built over the screen rather than in a waiting room. What online counselling does not solve is a home with no private hour in it, and it is not the route to an assessment or a diagnosis, neither of which this practice provides. If you take the consultation on a video call rather than by phone, it doubles as a test of the format before you have paid for anything.
Longer pieces from the blog, written for people working out how therapy in Ontario actually operates before they book anything.
Therapy is not a crisis service. These run around the clock when it cannot wait for an appointment:
If you are in immediate danger, please call 911.
Every session is online, so where you are in the province changes nothing about access. These pages cover the local picture.
It is a chance for both of us to see whether we're the right fit — no pressure, no commitment.
Book Free ConsultationIf you would rather ask a question first, write a line or two and we will reply by email. No appointment, no commitment.
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