Lebanese platforms redefining mental health in the Arab world

Mental health care in the Arab world has long struggled under the weight of stigma, scarcity, and a one-size-fits-all approach imported from the West. But a quiet shift is underway, and two Lebanese-founded platforms are at the center of it. The Beiruter spoke with Elggo Relief and Areeka Care are taking radically different approaches to the same crisis, and both were built by people who know it personally.

Elggo Relief: Reaching the classroom before the crisis

The story of Elggo Relief begins in 2022, when Luma Makari, academic psychologist and co-founder of the platform, began hearing from parents, teachers, and principals in the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion and the Naqoura incidents. The message was urgent and consistent: children were struggling, and it showed.

"With adults, it's easier to pretend like you're ok and to hide your mental health," Makari tells The Beiruter. "But it's not the same with kids. You can tell."

That year, Makari assembled a group of regional psychologists and educators to respond at scale. Without any tech infrastructure, they ran a digital well-being program that reached around 12,000 students in Lebanon, and documented a 30% increase in well-being among participants. By 2023, with results in hand and growing regional interest, Makari crossed paths with Mirna Mneimneh, a co-founder who had spent seven years working in education technology in sales and marketing. Together, they built what Elggo Relief is today.

The platform integrates mental health education directly into school systems through two tracks. The first is curriculum-based: trained educators deliver well-being lessons in classroom settings or as homework, with peer-to-peer activities designed to help students work through shared challenges. The second is AI-driven: the platform learns each student's individual challenges over time and begins delivering personalized content and pathways, nudging the right resources to the right child at the right moment.

Crucially, it also gives school counselors an analytics layer. "We can start to see the different markers that are starting to show up in the students," explains Makari, "and we put them in action at an earlier stage." The goal is proactive intervention, not crisis response.

Today, Elggo Relief works with around 5,000 students, primarily across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Lebanon, despite being where the platform was born, has been slower to adopt it, a reality both founders attribute to well-documented concerns around data privacy and AI in the country. "What we have built is very ethical," says Mneimneh. "There are different guardrails. It's not what everyone sees."

Perhaps the most striking detail: the platform is entirely free to schools, and entirely self-funded. "We are bootstrapped," says Mneimneh. "We don't have external funding."

On the state of mental health awareness in the Arab world, Makari is measured. "If you are putting the whole Arab world in the same bucket, we have a problem," she says. Different countries are at different stages, Lebanon, she notes, has relatively strong acceptance of therapy and group sessions, while other countries in the region still carry more stigma around seeking help. But she sees a clear directional shift: "There is a huge shift now towards dealing with mental health as part of the well-being of humans. In general."

Areeka Care: Therapy for Lebanese, by those who understand

Teddy Khalife has lived the problem he is trying to solve. Born in France, schooled there, then back to Lebanon, then out again to Africa, then Australia, his is the story of the Lebanese diaspora, scattered and resilient. And when he sought therapy in each country he landed in, the same gap kept appearing.

"No one really understood me," he  tells The Beiruter. "If I was in Australia, for example, the therapist wouldn't understand what I meant when I talked about war, or losing money in the banks." The insight that launched Areeka Care is simple but profound: effective therapy requires cultural fluency, not just clinical credentials.

About four years ago, Khalife began developing the concept. Two years ago, in 2023, the platform went live with funding secured and a vision sharpened: an online therapy service built specifically for Lebanese people, wherever they are.

The therapist network is rigorous. Each of 80 therapists on the platform holds a minimum of a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology and is registered with the Lebanese Order of Psychologists (LOPS). Of the 50 applications received in the past two months alone, only a select few made it through, a two-stage process involving interviews with experienced therapists and with Khalife himself. "This builds trust," he says simply.

The numbers are building quickly. To date, Areeka Care has delivered over 10,000 therapy sessions to more than 500 patients from countries spanning Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Australia, Canada, and Nigeria. Roughly half of all users are based in Lebanon, with the Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Dubai, representing a fast-growing segment. The word is spreading organically: "Lebanese expats are spreading the word, telling each other to try Areeka Care. That's what's happening."

In terms of who is using the platform, Khalife cites his Meta analytics: the core audience falls between 20 and 35 years old, though there is also significant demand from teenagers. Privacy is a founding value, users are only asked for an email address and their preferred therapist.

On the question of stigma, Khalife is pragmatic. "We're not trying to convince people who don't believe in therapy,” he says. "We focus on people who already believe in therapy and are seeking it." For younger Lebanese in particular, he says, therapy is no longer taboo. For those in their 40s and 50s, the story is more complicated.

His message to the diaspora is direct: "I just want Lebanese people to know about us. The more they know about us, the more we can help them."

A new map for mental health

What unites Elggo Relief and Areeka Care is more than Lebanese roots. Both platforms were built on a fundamental rejection of imported, culturally misaligned solutions, and both are betting that context is as important as credentials. One is reaching children inside school walls before problems escalate; the other is meeting adults wherever they have landed in the world.

The Arab mental health landscape is shifting. The taboo is weakening, the demand is real, and Lebanese founders are quietly building the infrastructure to meet it, one student, one session, one conversation at a time.