Dr. David Fernandez

David is a registered clinical psychologist and full member of the Malaysian Society of Clinical Psychology. David holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology from HELP University, Malaysia and a PhD in Psychology from Nottingham Trent University, UK. He has experience in assessing and treating a wide range of mental health conditions including depression and anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and psychosis, trauma and stressor-related disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and personality disorders. He has particular expertise in treating addictive disorders, with extensive experience in working with individuals with substance and behavioral addictions within both residential and outpatient settings.

David adopts a person-centered, integrative approach to therapy and believes that to be effective, treatment should be tailored according to the unique needs of each individual. As an integrative psychotherapist, he draws on various schools of psychotherapy including humanistic, existential, cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic traditions, as well as motivational interviewing. He is also trained in emotion-focused therapy, an experiential modality that emphasizes emotion as being central to the therapeutic change process. 

In addition to his clinical work, David actively conducts and publishes scientific research on addiction. His research broadly encompasses the assessment and treatment of behavioral addictions, with a focus on compulsive sexual behavior and problematic pornography use. His research on behavioral addictions has been published in leading scientific journals including Clinical Psychology Review and Archives of Sexual Behavior. David’s full list of publications can be found on Google Scholar.

Areas of interest: 

• Addiction (alcohol, substance and behavioral) 

• Compulsive sexual behavior, problematic pornography use and chemsex/sexualized drug use 

• Depression and anxiety 

• Bipolar disorder 

• Schizophrenia and psychosis 

• Personality disorders 

• Trauma and stressor-related disorders 

• Impulse-control disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorders 

Language Fluency: 

• English 

Affiliations: 

• Malaysian Allied Health Professions Council - MAHPC(CP)00360 

• Malaysian Society of Clinical Psychology, Full Membership (CP1-0254)