Gentle Steps is a Nigerian telehealth platform for grief, trauma, recovery, family and workplace mental health. We exist because too many people were being asked to heal in rooms that were never designed for them.
What guides us
Care before scale.
"A platform is only as good as the room it creates. We would rather have three therapists who are properly supported than thirty who are not."
Rooted in Nigeria
Built for the diaspora too
2022
Founded in Abuja Ngeria
Gentle Steps began with a simple, uncomfortable observation: the people who most needed specialised mental health care in Nigeria were the least likely to find it. Grief support existed, but rarely in Igbo. Trauma therapy existed, but rarely at a price a teacher could pay. Corporate wellness existed, but mostly as a poster in a break room.
Meanwhile, the platforms that did offer online therapy were built for a different reality entirely — credit cards, unlimited data, and a therapy culture that assumed you had your own quiet room. None of that described most of the people we knew.
So we built differently. We started with specialisation over generalisation, because grief work and workplace burnout are not the same skill. We added chat and audio sessions for people with no private space and a 2GB data plan. We made pricing public, naira-locked and sliding-scale. And we insisted that every clinician we onboard can actually demonstrate training in the work they claim to do.
Today we serve clients across Nigeria and the diaspora — but the founding principle has not moved: care before scale.
6
Languages
3
Session formats
24h
Match turnaround
To make specialised, licensed mental health care reachable for people in Nigeria and the diaspora — in the language they think in, at a price they can sustain, on a device and data plan they actually have.
A Nigeria where asking for psychological help carries no more shame than asking for malaria treatment — and where the quality of the care you receive does not depend on your postcode, your accent, or your income.
We reject 86% of clinician applicants. Every therapist must demonstrate supervised training in the specific pathway they practice.
No hidden fees, no surprise add-ons, no "contact us for a quote" on individual therapy. Every rate is published.
Our pathways are anti-shame by design — including how we talk about relapse, self-harm and family conflict.
Free therapist switching, granular consent, and the right to have your data deleted. You are never locked in.
Not a marketplace where anyone can hang a shingle. A supervised clinical network with verification, pathways and outcome review built in.
Every clinician passes all five before a single client is matched to them.
Credential Audit
Degree certificates, licensure and professional body membership verified against issuing institutions.
Pathway Evidence
Documented supervised hours and training specific to the pathway they will practice — not general experience.
Clinical Interview
A structured case-based interview with our clinical lead, including risk assessment and escalation reasoning.
Telehealth Readiness
Assessment of remote-specific competence: managing silence on audio, reading distress over chat, low-bandwidth contingency.
Ongoing Supervision
Monthly group supervision and quarterly outcome review. Clinicians who stop meeting the standard are removed.
Not just trauma therapy — trauma-informed practice across every pathway. That means pacing, choice, predictability and never forcing disclosure. A client who is not ready to name what happened is not failing; the clinician adjusts.
Each pathway carries its own outcome measures, reviewed at sessions 1, 3 and 6. If a client is not improving, we adjust the plan, the approach or the clinician — rather than letting someone quietly drift for months.
Load-shedding, shared rooms, expensive data, unreliable networks. Our clinicians are trained to run a meaningful session when the video drops, when the client is typing under a blanket, or when the power goes out mid-sentence.
Our network is deliberately small and growing carefully. Every clinician below has been verified through the five-stage pipeline and works within a supervised pathway.
Guidance & Counselling Professional
Social Psychology background with a community and trauma-informed support focus. WHO-certified mental health advocate working with individuals and community groups.
Mental Health Therapist, M.Ed., M.Sc.
MCASSON and CPCN member practising trauma-informed care, with a focus on grief, loss and life transitions. Delivers both virtual and physical therapy, plus clinician training.
Clinical Psychologist & Tele-Health Therapist
Educationist, program coordinator and clinical psychologist. Works across family dynamics, workplace wellbeing and community mental health programmes.
We're onboarding additional licensed clinicians across grief, trauma, recovery, family and corporate pathways.
Everything published on this platform is written to be useful to someone in distress — not to rank, not to shock, and not to sell.
Any page describing symptoms, treatment approaches or crisis guidance is reviewed by a licensed clinician before publication and re-reviewed at least annually. Reviewer names and credentials are recorded internally, and the review date is tracked against each page.
We prioritise peer-reviewed research, WHO and Nigerian federal health guidance, and professional body positions from bodies such as the Nigerian Association of Clinical Psychologists. Where evidence is mixed or contested, we say so rather than presenting a single view as settled fact.
We do not claim online therapy is right for everyone. Acute psychiatric crisis, active psychosis, and situations requiring physical safety intervention are outside what telehealth can responsibly provide. Where that is the case, we say so on the page rather than burying it in a disclaimer.
If you believe something on this site is inaccurate, unsafe or misleading, email hello@gentlesteps.ng with the page and the concern. Clinical content corrections are reviewed within five working days and substantive changes are noted on the page itself.
Health information is treated as sensitive personal data under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, requiring explicit consent. African data residency is used where available. Consent is granular — you can accept care without accepting marketing, and you can request deletion at any time.
Governance is not glamorous, but it is the difference between a therapy platform and a chat app.
Every booking includes a safety screen before payment. Where risk indicators appear, the booking is flagged for the clinical lead and the therapist contacts the client with a safety plan before the first session. Emergency contacts are only used where there is judged imminent risk, and the client is told first.
Clinicians participate in monthly group supervision, with additional individual supervision for complex trauma and recovery cases. Supervision is a professional requirement here, not an optional extra — and it is how we catch drift before it affects a client.
No clinician on this platform practises outside their verified scope. If a client presents with needs better served by psychiatry, inpatient care or a specialist we do not have, we refer out and say so plainly — even though it means losing the booking.
Session notes are kept to the minimum required for continuity of care and stored with access limited to the treating clinician and the clinical lead. Notes are never shared with whoever paid for the session. Where a client is sponsored from abroad, the payer receives booking confirmation only.
A client who does not feel safe or well-matched can request a rematch from their dashboard without charge, without a penalty period and without having to justify it to the current clinician. Clinical complaints are reviewed by the clinical lead, not by the marketing team.
We operate as a data controller processing sensitive personal data on the basis of explicit consent. Clients can access, correct, export or delete their data, and withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing consent for health data processing necessarily ends the care relationship, and we tell you that upfront rather than burying it.
We are early. We would rather tell you that than pretend to be a decade-old institution.
Founded
Gentle Steps takes shape around a single question: why is specialised mental health care in Nigeria priced and designed for people who are not Nigerian?
Clinical model
Rather than a marketplace, we build a supervised network. Credential audit, pathway evidence, clinical interview, telehealth readiness and ongoing supervision become mandatory.
Access
Text-based sessions at 5–10 MB per session make therapy possible for clients with no private room and a modest data plan — a group most platforms never designed for.
Today
Three verified clinicians live on the platform across grief, trauma, family, corporate and life-transition work — with more being onboarded. We publish the real number rather than inflating it.
Next
Recruitment focused on Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba fluency across every pathway, plus deeper coverage in substance recovery and family therapy.
If you are a licensed Nigerian therapist who is tired of working without supervision, without fair pay, or without a system that protects your clients — we should talk.
Send your CV, licence details and a short note about the pathway you want to practise to careers@gentlesteps.ng. We review every application ourselves and reply either way — usually within two weeks.
careers@gentlesteps.ngTake the three-minute booking form and we'll match you with a licensed specialist who actually works in your area of need. Free 15-minute introduction before you commit to anything.
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