Monaco has no shortage of excellence: top schools, world-class healthcare, safety that residents don’t take for granted. But when it comes to emotional health – especially within high-pressure families, international marriages, and globally mobile childhoods – support can be harder to find than it should be.

That’s why the arrival of Dr Raha Didevar is significant.

She’s the kind of psychologist who doesn’t hide behind clichés. In conversation, she’s warm, quick to laugh, and very clear about what she believes: therapy should do something. Not just validate feelings, but help people move – towards clarity, structure, boundaries, and better decisions.

And in a place like Monaco, where appearances can be immaculate while family life is anything but, that approach may be exactly what many households have been missing.

“It’s taboo to say there’s a problem”

Dr Didevar’s work focuses on couples, families, children and adolescents, particularly within the expat community, where identity is layered and life feels like constant adaptation.

She’s frank about what she’s observed: plenty of families struggle, but few admit it. “There are so many families with problems, but it’s still very much taboo. Nobody wants to say there’s an issue.”

Her view is the opposite. Therapy isn’t a last resort. It’s maintenance.

“You don’t need to have a mental disorder to be in therapy. I think everyone should be in therapy. There’s no person in this world who doesn’t have problems. What happens is you store everything inside, and then it overloads. As you age, it affects you physically. The mind is powerful. If your mind isn’t at peace, your body struggles too.”

From Kenya to Monaco

Born in Tehran, Dr Didevar moved to London at age two after her father’s death when she was six. She began boarding school in England at eight, learning independence early.

Her path to psychology was unconventional. After studying at the University of Texas, she worked as an NBC news reporter and NBA sportscaster. But her direction changed after volunteering in Kenya in 2005, where she founded a humanitarian organisation supporting girls escaping female genital mutilation.

She later taught high school in Los Angeles, working with gang-involved teenagers, before earning two master’s degrees and a doctorate in Depth Clinical Psychology at the Carl Jung Institute in Santa Barbara.

In 2011, while two months pregnant, she lost her fiancé Prince Ali-Reza Pahlavi, younger son of Iran’s last Shah. She gave birth to their daughter, Princess Iryana Pahlavi.

For Dr Didevar, that legacy isn’t about status. She raised her daughter emphasising humility over privilege, choosing environments like Bali that reflected spirituality and grounded values.

“I tried to raise her to be humble – not ‘I come from royalty, I’m a princess’. For me, we are all human. We all came from the same place and we’re going to the same place.”

Until her daughter turned six, birthday parties meant bringing secondhand toys to orphanages the next day. “I wanted her to interact with the kids and give the toys. When she turned six, she asked, ‘Do you think this year I can have a birthday present?’ I said yes—because you’ve earned it. Everything is about earning and knowing the value.”

Solutions, not endless sessions

Ask Dr Didevar what makes her different, and she says frustration with traditional therapeutic models.

“By law in the U.S., psychologists aren’t allowed to give advice. You sit there and let clients find their way. For me, that was frustrating. I don’t like taking people’s money without getting to the point. That cliché – ‘So tell me, how does that make you feel?’ – it’s frustrating.”

In contrast, her approach blends psychoanalysis with life coaching. “You tell me what’s wrong, and we come up with solutions together. I give you ideas, because when you’re in the problem, you don’t know which direction to go.”

Her message is: if therapy is endless, it becomes expensive avoidance. If it is practical, it becomes life-changing.

Working with children: when resistance drops

Dr Didevar tailors her approach based on age and emotional development. Under six, formal therapy rarely works, she says. Between six and nine, she uses art therapy to help children express what they can’t yet articulate. Around nine to 11, she shifts to role play, a technique that flips the power dynamic entirely.

The method is deceptively simple: let the child become the authority figure. A nine-year-old struggling at school becomes the teacher. A child dealing with bullying becomes the bully. Suddenly, advice they would never accept from an adult pours out of their own mouths.

Her broader philosophy is about balance: children need structure, but they also need agency. Saying “no” without explanation breeds resistance. But offering choice – “Here are the options, here are the outcomes, what do you think is best?” – creates buy-in. They feel in control, which is exactly what they need at that age.

The hidden cost of constant adaptation

Monaco’s international families produce remarkably adaptable children, until they’re not.

Dr Didevar has watched this pattern repeatedly: children who’ve moved countries, switched schools, learned new languages, all without visible complaint. Then one day, something shifts. The child who seemed endlessly flexible suddenly refuses. No more moves. No more fresh starts.

Her own daughter experienced this. After attending schools across continents, she arrived in Monaco and drew a line. “She said, ‘I don’t want to change schools anymore. This is the last move.’ She wanted to stay in one space and be herself.”

For parents navigating Monaco’s transient expat culture, the lesson is clear: just because a child is coping doesn’t mean they’re fine. Adaptability has limits. Watch for the signs – withdrawal, irritability, sudden anxiety – that signal they’ve reached them.

When couples become roommates

With couples, Dr Didevar sees the same pattern: erosion disguised as stability.

“Couples drift away when they don’t talk. It becomes so big they explode, then divorce. Once the curtain of respect is torn, even if you sew it up, the tear still shows.”

She recently worked with a couple divorcing after 21 years. When she asked what they enjoyed doing together, he said jogging – which his wife never wants to do. She named activities he refuses to partake in. After two decades of marriage, they’d never noticed they had nothing in common.

“It’s the mental connection that keeps a couple strong.”

The problem isn’t lack of love, it’s lack of commonality. Couples get bored. They stop doing things together. They become co-managers of a household rather than partners. Her prescription is communication, date nights focused on actual conversation, finding shared interests, and getting help before resentment calcifies into contempt.

Phones at the table

On screen time, Dr Didevar is pro-boundary and realistic about the struggle.

“Parents get fed up and stop controlling it because they have their own distractions and stress. But ultimately, this is your responsibility.”

Her advice isn’t about being stricter, it’s about being consistent. She sets a 30-minutes per day limit for her own daughter. She admits she’s not always perfect at enforcement, but that’s the point. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s showing up repeatedly with the same boundary.

The deeper issue, she suggests, lies in the example set by adults. Children cannot reasonably be asked to disconnect if the grown-ups around them remain constantly absorbed in their own screens. The message is simple but often overlooked: put the phone down and be present. Not only at the dinner table, but in the car, after school, during a walk home — at any moment when a child reaches out to talk. Devices can wait; conversations cannot. Creating screen-free spaces, whether at home or in restaurants, helps restore attention to where it matters most: the relationship between parent and child.

Beyond boundaries, she pushes for uncomfortable conversations about the realities online: predators, deepfakes, coercion, how quickly an innocent interaction becomes threatening. “It’s terrifying because we don’t know how to navigate it. We didn’t grow up with these kinds of threats. But they are absolutely the kinds of conversations we need to be having with our kids.”

The privilege problem

One uncomfortable truth Dr Didevar offers Monaco parents: giving children everything often leaves them with nothing that matters.

“When we give too much, children have nothing to look forward to. They want more and more, and nothing makes them happy.”

The solution isn’t deprivation, it’s teaching value. Get children involved in donation. Educate them about the world beyond their bubble: history, suffering, how children in other countries live. “They need to see the other side. The story isn’t always glamour.”

Make money something earned, not automatically given. “Money doesn’t grow on trees even if you have it. It’s not about punishment, it’s setting them up to succeed in the future.”

Raha’s lived both extremes herself. “People see me and can’t imagine I slept on the ground in Africa – showered in rivers, made food on fire. I’m a chameleon. I can stay in a nice hotel, but I can also sleep on dirt.”

At 15, her daughter will experience the same. She’s taking her to Africa. “Material things – you can’t take them with you. Experiences are what really make the person.”

Open for business

Dr Didevar has worked with clients worldwide online for years, but recently received approval to open her Monaco office – a complicated process requiring clearance from the Department of Economy, Department of Health, and ultimately Prince Albert II himself.

For Monaco residents, this means access to a psychologist who understands international family dynamics, doesn’t waste time, and addresses the real problem families face: children overwhelmed by privilege, couples drifting into emotional silence, teenagers navigating pressures their parents never encountered.

If she had legislative power, she’d mandate two things: therapy for all children aged 12 to 18, and one year of therapy before marriage. “That would solve a lot of problems,” she says convincingly.

If Monaco is where everything is expected to work beautifully, Dr Raha Didevar is making a different promise: Sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s where the work begins.

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Dr. Raha Didevar, Depth and Clinical Psychologist, can be contacted at Drdidevar@bigheartstherapy.com.