Mohammad Elshinawy – Behind the Minbar Podcast S2 E07 – Our Mosques & Mental Health

AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the negative impact of smartphone usage on mental health issues, as well as the lack of mental health counseling for Muslims. They also emphasize the need for more training and education for Muslims to manage mental health issues and create a safe environment for all stakeholders. The speakers stress the importance of understanding mental health and finding meaning in one's behavior, and encourage people to take a leave of work and focus on their mental health. They also mention a therapy called "Logotherapy" that involves rethinking behavior and finding meaning in the context of their Prophet's words. The speakers stress the need for evidence-based evidence in the field of human and peer specialists to provide evidence for their studies and for their work.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wassalatu wassalamu ala rasoolillah.
Welcome everybody back to another episode of Behind
the Minbar, Blueprints for a Better Masjid, Mental
Health Edition.
Inshallah, today we only bring you qualified people,
and that's why I brought another New Yorker
on for this episode, Dr. Ali Sayyid, welcome.
Alhamdulillah, jazakallah khair.
Wa alaikum big guy.
So, aside from being from the greatest city
on earth, no, that's Mecca, my favorite city,
no, not that either.
This is not starting well.
The place I currently hate containing the people
I love, mashallah.
We go way back, me and Dr. Ali
Sayyid, you went on, mashallah, to finish your
psychiatry residency in Kansas, and you're back now.
You serve as the psychiatry fellow, right, at
Columbia?
Yes.
May Allah increase you, and Dr. Ali Sayyid
is a wealth of many things in the
mental health space, and a bit of a
pioneer in the Muslim community, and that's why
I wanted to get first dibs on him
with this episode.
How do we start?
Let's level set, alright?
Mental health, and then we'll build to the
Muslim community, and the masjid's role in this
whole equation, but where are we as a
society in modern times?
I know it's extremely complex, but how are
people doing, and is the Muslim community any
different?
I know, sort of, you like to start
at data, so let's build from the ground
up.
Bismillah.
Jazakallah khair for having me on the podcast.
Bismillah walhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salam ala rasoolillah,
rabbi yashrakh li sadri wa yasir li amri,
wa ahlul uqdatan min al sani, So, where
are we in current times?
There's the good news, and then there's the
not-so-good news.
Which one would you like first?
Oh, man, it's always a hard question.
You pick.
Okay, okay.
So the good news, alhamdulillah, is that the
stigma related to mental health, since it's now
being spoken about a lot more, celebrities are
speaking about mental health, the pop culture, and
especially here in North America, there's more conversations
that are happening.
It is increasing interest in the field of
mental health, and it's bringing awareness.
And so that's the good part.
Suicide Awareness Week, subhanAllah.
I don't know when the episode is going
to come out, but it just so happens
that I got to record this on the
back end.
SubhanAllah, mashaAllah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And so there's all of the awareness efforts
that are going on.
And mashaAllah, the Muslims are in a better
place today than we were maybe 20 years
ago in terms of kind of coming to
terms with some of these things.
But I believe it appears that our reaction
to mental health issues in our communities have
been reactive instead of proactive.
We're playing catch-up.
We're playing catch-up.
So how bad is it?
Can I ask that?
Because of course I can Google, but I
think people don't know that Googling itself is
a skill, or AI-ing is a skill.
Sometimes you get what you're looking for.
You confirm your own bias.
But how biased are these numbers in your
assessment since you've studied this on a deeper
level?
Like we hear, I hear, the UK has
sort of instated a minister of loneliness, and
so has Japan recently, a year after that.
And we hear about these sort of, the
numbers are epidemic proportions, whether it be suicide
or otherwise.
So what is the pulse of, like, modern
societies these days?
So that's an excellent question.
I think in terms of the data that
we're looking at, things have changed since the
smartphones came out, especially for the youth starting
in 2007.
In terms of anxiety, depression, suicide rates in
the youth and the adolescents have skyrocketed since
the smartphones came out in the early 2000s,
and they have successively just progressed into a
bad space.
In terms of the data for Muslims, it's
limited, but the APA has reported that the
Muslim communities, immigrants as well as U.S.-born,
are being afflicted with various mental health issues
based on the data they've collected.
And the way I see it, if the
statistics for mental health is one in four
individual adults have a diagnosable mental illness, and
we are a part of the American society,
and so our community, as much as we
think that this is not us and everyone
else, we are a microcosm of the larger
society that we're a part of.
So Dr. Khaled mentioned an interesting point on
Friday during the talk.
He said, I will give anyone $100 if
you can tell me in a family of
five people that nobody has a mental illness.
I was waiting for someone to take him
up on it.
Wow, subhanAllah.
I mean, of course, there's a spectrum.
Some are disorders, some are actually clinically more
severe.
You know, Yaqeen, subhanAllah, also had the Imam
report.
We were speaking about it.
We didn't get a chance to discuss it
at length before the episode.
What did that sort of reveal as well?
Many people may not know.
I'll try to include it in the description
of the video for people that want to
probe it further, but if you can sort
of summarize it for us because we're transitioning
to Masajid, right?
How can Masajid be an asset in pushing
back or at least mitigating some of this
mounting pain point of our communities?
No, absolutely.
So the APA report suggests that Muslims are
much more likely to seek out mental health
care and counseling with the clergy, with the
Imams in the Masajid as opposed to seeking
out professional mental health or counseling than other
faith traditions.
And so that's one piece of things.
Most Masajid advertise counseling as one of their
core services.
The report from Yaqeen sheds a lot of
light in terms of when it comes to
counseling, what is the training of Imams, formal
training in mental health counseling.
And the data says that less than 10
% have a formal degree in mental health
counseling, like a formal degree with training as
well as supervision by a supervising counselor.
Less than 10%.
Less than 10% of, like, if you
take the Imams, the youth directors, all of
the sort of clerical personnel, clergy personnel, put
it together, less than 10% of them
have it.
Like a formal training.
Which means far less because half the Masajid
don't have staff to begin with.
That's another discussion.
Okay, keep going.
I'm just trying to, like, contextualize numbers.
Absolutely.
And so less than 10% have formal
training and education and experience in the field
of mental health.
The other 90%, there is along the lines
of no training, reading some books, and then
attending some seminars, and then having some formal
classes.
But essentially the idea is that you have
the theory of attending seminars, classes, and reading
books.
But can someone practice, you know, counseling and
therapy just by the theoretical knowledge?
In all of mental health professions, psychiatry, psychology,
therapy, counseling, we have the didactic portions, but
we are required to have a certain amount
of hours of supervision where we get feedback
from a supervising therapist.
And we go back and forth, and we
go back and forth, and it's like an
apprenticeship.
And we do that for years until we
are able to.
They are able to say, yes, now you
can practice independently.
So you're saying people already look to the
Masajid as a place of trust when they
are going through these social or emotional stressors
or periods in their life, but the resource
is not there, or maybe even the awareness
that we need to build capacity or resource
is not there.
Why do you think that is?
Why do you think if we were to
knock out the top three or four or
five reasons why these are not mainstream discussions
in our Masajid, or if they are brought
up, they are dismissed or deprioritized at least?
Where do you think that comes from?
You know, subhanAllah, that is a hard question.
It's a heavy question.
It's a hard question to answer exactly.
But before I answer that, so in terms
of we talked about the formal mental health
training of imams and the clergy and the
congregational care leaders in the Masajid.
Now when the imam report, when they asked
what are the additional areas of education and
training that should be out of the top
five, three of them deal with mental health.
According to the report, family counseling, mental health
counseling, as well as contemporary issues that are
kind of affecting our youth.
Some of that might be along the lines
of mental health, LGBTQ and other things that
are also related peripherally and directly to mental
health.
Some are others, but there are also mental
health issues.
Self-awareness of the religious leaders that there
is enough training.
We don't have the resource and the likes.
Do you think stigma is a part of
it?
Stigma.
So stigma has always been a part of
it from the very beginning.
I think our community, the stigma has layers
to it.
So it's not just the stigma of having
a mental illness, but it's not knowing what
we don't know and then conflating spiritual issues
with mental health issues and saying that these
are one and the same.
So if I am feeling depressed and low
and I'm not interested in doing things I'd
normally do or I'm feeling low or down
or depressed, I may hear that this may
be a lack of my connection with Allah,
my iman, my faith.
My adhkar are not on point and I'm
not making enough du'a to Allah.
And without a doubt all of these things
are helpful, but we have to understand that
that is part of the puzzle and not
the entire picture sometimes.
No, that's huge.
I try my best to help reverse that
trend because it was, of course it's a
stereotype, but there's always some truth to every
stereotype that all imams chalk it up to
lack of faith.
And so sometimes it could be your faith
that, you know, destines you to go through
a certain trial because Allah wants to elevate
you even higher and He knows that you
can handle and others can't.
But, you know, when Allah loves a person,
He puts them through tests and those tests,
there's no reason to believe whatsoever.
Those tests have to be physical tests or
financial tests only.
Yaqub a.s. sort of he lost his
eyesight from weeping over his son for years
on end and so on and so forth.
And even, subhanAllah, you think of the validation
that comes from a hadith like the hadith
of Talbina.
You know, it's the Prophet s.a.w.
said in the hadith of Aisha r.a.
عليكم بالتلبينة sort of like I prescribe for
you, I'm recommending for you Talbina.
Talbina is like boiled oats.
It's serotonin.
It's, right?
Polysaccharides, right?
Sugar, but hopefully healthier ones, right?
So you just boil some oats or throw
some honey on it or barley or wheat.
The scholars have like different explanations.
Probably it meant different things to different towns.
Everyone's got their neighborhood recipe, right?
But basically Talbina is this porridge of sorts,
this oatmeal of sorts.
He said, فإنها تجم الفؤاد وتذهب ببعض الحزن
that it pulls the heart together.
He literally said pulls the heart together and
does away with some of the sadness.
So this is even like a dietary issue.
And, you know, when I think of even
the mental health of even the imams, like,
of course, it doesn't mean that if you're
an imam, you're automatically sort of more religious.
No, it doesn't mean that.
No way.
But relatively in aggregate, you should expect that
those sort of closer to the revelation are
more built to have resolve, spiritual and psychological
resolve and resilience and the likes.
But even the imams, they're not able to
escape modern life and the dietary sort of
imbalances of modern life and the processed foods
of modern life.
And it's not just about like, you know,
weak faith or the godless era or like
the philosophies, which is a huge part of
it.
It's the machinery of like the postmodern world.
It's sort of the unhealthy way we live
modern life.
And so the issue of it could be
a sign of your faith.
I think that's really helpful.
I think also to let people know, guys,
just holistic living, just, you know, prevention is
better than the cure.
And even like what do we eat?
You are what you eat.
You eat garbage, your brain is going to
become mush.
I mean, there's this whole field now of
nutritional psychiatry, an entire field, which is a
newer field, where we're talking about what we
consume affects our mental health, what we consume.
And as Muslims, we also know what we
consume also affects our spirituality, our iman and
our deen in different ways.
We're not going to feel the same way
if we eat pizza versus, you know, something
like a salad, for instance.
Or if you fill your stomach as opposed
to eating for energy.
You know, so subhanAllah, we see that sometimes
it may be due to a spiritual issue.
Sometimes it may be due to a nutritional
issue.
Sometimes it may be due to a physical
issue.
You know, when the migration happened, a lot
of the companions, subhanAllah, may Allah be pleased
with them all, a lot of them were
anxious and sad because they were homesick.
And the climate, physically the climate in Medina
was different than the climate in Mecca, for
instance.
So physical change, they weren't used to it.
It was an adjustment issue.
And they felt that.
And the Prophet, peace be upon him, he
recognized that.
And many of the companions, all of them,
they felt these things.
So physical considerations, emotional considerations, you know, attachment
to their hometown and all of these things,
spiritual concern, nutritional, all of these things, it
has to come together with the mind, body
and spirit.
And that would probably make them, and I've
heard, I know it's disputed, but I've heard
also studies that have tried to argue, I'm
not, above my pay grade, I'm not trying
to like lean this way or that way,
tried to argue that this factor of like
how much belonging versus misfit I feel as
a Muslim in wider society would actually set
up a Muslim for heightened challenges because I'm
the scattered 1%, right?
And so I may even be more prone
to falling into these difficult places, whether it
be suicide rates or otherwise, may Allah protect
everyone.
I mean.
But this, we're not even saying anymore that
we are not insulated and we could become
like wider society, that we could even be
more challenged in wider society in certain respects
because you said it's like, is this, do
I belong here or not?
Absolutely.
Am I oriented, grounded, welcome, welcomed?
Absolutely.
So the data on Islamophobia has come out,
they've been tracking since 9-11 and the
data from the APA that's reported says that
we are experiencing discrimination at the airports, sometimes
with law enforcement, sometimes bullying, just different types
of things, much more than other demographics.
And so I've worked with some of the
youth that just finished high school, they go
to college, they're like, they're very anxious because
they don't feel like they belong after spending
an entire time in Islamic school, they step
into college and they're very anxious and they're
having adjustment issues and integrating and assimilating and
kind of navigating these.
So Islamophobia has, now we're actually proposing an
APA session for the next APA conference in
LA, inshallah, inshallah gets accepted, saying that Islamophobia
is a structural determinant of mental health and
a social determinant of mental health for Muslims.
If we perceive that we don't belong and
if we feel this way, if we're made
to feel this way, it will affect our
moods, our mental health, anxiety, depression, all of
these things, we're at a higher risk than
others.
So how, when you speak to communities, I
do want to get back to the point,
I think it's probably the most practical of
all and we're going to have to unpack
it, which is this notion of like, because
where do we get from here to where
we want to be?
I really want to figure out a way
to discuss like expert or bust, that whole
notion of like, okay, the imams may not
exist and if they exist, they likely don't
have the training, if they have the training,
likely don't have the time.
So it's just like there's a vacuum here.
At the same time, we're not going to
hire five psychiatrists for every masjid right now,
at least not in the next 24 to
48 hours or years.
So I do want to talk about like
triaging and bridging the gap.
Well put, jazakallah khairan.
But when you speak to communities, as you've
been traveling and doing, how do you help
them not feel alienated from this subject?
Like our tradition, right?
We were at one point sort of the
Maristans and what's your approach?
I don't want to sort of put words
in your mouth.
So, you know, it's initiatives like the ones
that these masjids here, Malv and IECPA, all
you brothers, may Allah bless you all, are
recognizing that there is a gap.
So I think the most important thing is
understanding there's an issue.
The imams have said they need additional training.
In the Yaqeen report, they said the most
important areas of education and training, three out
of five are all related to mental health.
So they understand that there is a need,
but there's no time to get a master's
degree, you know, with all the duties of
an imam and new directors.
There's no time to get a graduate degree
in counseling.
It's not practical and it's not an easy
fix.
But once we understand and we identify the
elephant in the room and now we can
actually bring the stakeholders together, we have the
imams, we have the mental health professionals, and
we have the community that's being affected and
we make a safe space for all of
us to come to a table and say,
how do we all work together to bridge
the gap?
So I'm hearing, I'm part of a national
Muslim mental health group where they say, oh,
in Virginia, we have once monthly case collaborations
with the masajid and mental health professionals will
speak, you know, just actively collaborate like a
collaborative care model with the masjid and the
imam and talk about specific cases and do
case consultations and say that, okay, this is,
you know, an emergent issue, urgent issue or
something that can be handled in this type
of way.
You know, these are our recommendations.
So these are basically serving in like a
consulting capacity?
Yes, consulting capacity.
Okay.
All right.
That's great.
Something structured.
That'll help normalize, streamline a little bit of
this.
And because there's been friction between, and there
shouldn't be as Muslims, we know that mental
health and psychiatry came from Iqra, right?
Iqra wa rabbuka al-akram Allathee allama bilqalam
It's all from Allah.
Whether it's psychiatry, whether it's, you know, the
sacred knowledge, it's all from Allah.
And so this disconnect, and there are reasons
for it.
There are valid reasons for it.
There's another side to this story as well.
However, if we can come together to collaborate,
the mental health professional need the imams just
as much, if not more, than the imams
may need some, you know, some of that
professional insight.
So from the perspective of how can the
imams help the mental health professionals, we have,
when the Muslim patients come in therapy and
other things, many of them, some of them,
they say, my deen is important to me.
I want a therapy approach that is sensitive
to my tradition.
And we as therapists and mental health professionals
are trained in secular psychology.
You know, psyche means soul, the Latin word.
They suck the soul out of it.
And now we're left with secular psychology.
But originally, it's the study of the soul.
All the scholars of the past, you know,
Ibn al-Razi, al-Balkhi, you know, Sheikh
Imam Ghazali, you know, Ibn Qayyim, all of
them, when they wrote their books, all of
them talked about the soul because that is
what psychology is all about.
But we've kind of separated the two.
And now when sometimes when the imams and
one of our very good friends, he said,
please mention to them that, you know, there's
another side of the issue is when the
imams are referring the community members for counseling,
couples counseling or individual family counseling, that these
therapists, even if they're Muslims, Islam is part
of their like, what is their, we have
to kind of vet them in a way
that it's targeted to be sensitive to the
needs of the Muslims with Islam as the
foundation.
Keep going.
Complete your thought.
and so because we can, there's harm that's
been done and I've heard of personal stories
where couples have gone into therapy and have
been told, okay, this is a problem.
This is causing someone harm and ends up
in divorce.
Yeah.
And so there is this hedonistic type of
secular perspective in terms of psychology.
Anything that is, gives us pleasure, makes us
happy is what we should go for.
Anything that gives us grief, you know, hopeless,
you know, anything that makes us angry, sad,
stressed out, you know, there's a whole movement
of no contact of parents.
Don't contact parents.
And so as Muslims, You owe yourself better.
Don't speak to your parents.
Yes.
You know, like your parents cause you harm,
cut them off completely.
And if someone causes you harm, cut them
off.
And so because it's not rooted in the
Islamic paradigm.
And of course, if parents or siblings or
people are a source of trauma and stress,
yes, that's concerning.
But in the Islamic paradigm, there are ways
of kind of balancing.
For sure.
And so there's Dr. Just the last.
No, no, please.
She said the secular therapy, you know, you
have the junk food and then you have
wholesome food.
And I'm not, you know, I don't want
to get in trouble with a bunch of
health professionals.
But any type of therapy that's devoid for
Muslims, that's devoid of Islam as a foundation
will be a band-aid and it's not
wholesome.
It is junk therapy.
No, that's exactly what I was going to
interject with, that this is not sort of
a lack of appreciation or intent to slight
or act like sort of the religious sciences
are intended.
There's intended to guide everything, but they're not
intended to inform.
Allah taught us the importance of learning also,
importance of the empirical data and sort of
like experience and gathering all of that is
grounded in our deen.
And that's why the renaissance is the health
renaissance is happening in the Muslim world when
they paid attention to Islam more so than
when they accepted Islam as some sort of
like obscure cultural identity.
But back to what the interjection was going
to be is that after the disclaimer, we're
not trying to disparage.
At the same time, we have to accept
that there are certain givens in mainstream mental
health that could be of what adds to
the stigma.
Like this is some sort of like kafir
worldview.
And there's some truth to this.
Let's just accept it.
There is a rejection of God premise that
underlies a lot of these notions.
Premises of like you are the master of
your own destiny.
Well, first of all, that's wrong.
You don't own yourself or your destiny.
Second of all, it's harmful because if you
actually believe that, that also means the failures
was entirely my failure because my destiny is
in my hands.
And that's like self-abuse because why would
you shoulder that?
It is liberating to know that only Allah
knew that I didn't have and therefore I'm
not going to guilt myself or kill myself
over something that the pens have been lifted
and the pages have dried with.
It has a bigger wisdom.
This is not a fail in the absolute
sense of the word.
A rock bottom could be a place where
I build a good foundation off of.
There's always optimism when you realize that, oh,
I'm just here to do what I can
with what I have.
And then there's the whole moral element of
this as well that I'm not going to
be cutting corners.
I'm not going to be strong-arming.
Band-aid is an excellent metaphor for it.
You're just sort of, you get a coping
mechanism, a breathing technique.
And again, I know I'm being a little
bit sort of reductionist here.
But still, you can't explain to me why
I'm here, why is this meaningful, why I
should put up with it, why I shouldn't
blame myself.
There's a whole lot of whys and the
why is more important than the how.
So our therapy doesn't address whys.
The secular therapy does not address any why.
How can it?
It's materialistically grounded.
And the problem with that is, Viktor Frankl,
one of the German psychiatrists during the times
of the Holocaust, he wrote a book and
his therapy was called Logotherapy.
In Search of Meaning.
In the book, Man's Search for Meaning.
And the entire therapy is based on the
premise that human beings are, we seek meaning.
If we don't, if we cannot find meaning,
it will harm us in anything.
And what I love about our Deen is
that everything, every calamity, every issue has this
cognitive reframing and it's all with the akhirah
perspective, viewpoint.
So the narration, and you will have all
the references, the narration that says that a
believer is not harmed physically, mentally, emotionally, even
a prick of a thorn, except that his
sins are expiated.
So we're taking a problem and we're reframing
how we should think about it.
When Allah loves, just as you mentioned a
little while ago, when Allah loves someone, He
tests them.
We're talking about a test, but now if
we reframe that, this is perhaps a sign
of the love of Allah.
It's beautiful.
You know, we have a calamity, it's Allah
says in the Quran, there are those who
say, إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّا لِلَّهِ رَاجِعُونَ This is
so profound, whatever calamity we're in, it doesn't
matter what it is, if we can internalize
the meaning of this phrase that we do
not belong in this world, whatever is going
on, this is not the end all be
all, this is a test.
I do not belong here, I will not
always stay here, I will go back to
Allah.
And if we can internalize this, we just
reframe the whole situation and we've zoomed out.
That is the core issue, zoomed out of
sort of the periphery or secondary issues.
Zoomed out.
Beautiful.
So to bring everyone back, this is why
we're talking about the interdependence of, we need
the professionals to bring us in because we're
going to cause a blunder if we act
sort of unilaterally.
And the converse is also true, we need
each other.
We need each other and if we can
come together and come up with collaborative care
model where we have the mental health professional
and the imams and we talk about, hey,
just as you, we can help you with
some consulting for mental health, when the patients
come to us, I don't know, I've never
trained in Islam, I have not studied in
a seminary.
If you could guide me with some basics
so I know that what I'm telling them
is Islamically sound.
So consulting the experts as the Prophet ﷺ
taught us, you know best your worldly affairs
and an element of this is worldly, worldly
dynamics, right?
Whether it's the dynamics of modern life, the
dynamics of modern dietary, whatever we're going to
talk about.
And so we're going to consult the experts,
try to include them on the boards, make
these conversations normal, right?
Normalize them in our community.
Okay, now they're normalized.
How do we bridge the gap?
Because there's the financial component, there's the bandwidth
component, there's the imams themselves who may have
their own mental health challenges with sort of
the overwork and the overload.
What do you see is the call of
the hour?
I think the call is in order for
any culture to change, so for Muslims, the
culture, the way we think about mental health,
in order for any culture change to happen
or a changing of viewpoints, it's not a
technical solution.
It's an adaptive solution.
And an adaptive framework is where we identify
the problem together.
We, you know, the stakeholders do come together
and have meetings and then we find, we
build alliances.
There are going to be, there are professionals,
Dr. Khamil, Allah bless Dr. Khaled, there are
going to be professionals in the communities that
will have, or you know, Allah will put
people in the, and we bring these people
together and then we come up with, let's
come up with a model.
What works?
Okay, we're busy.
Can we do this once a month?
And then we do a pilot program and
then we assess and adjust and adapt along
the way.
And these exist in almost every community.
I mean, the Muslims have a disproportionately higher
presence in the health industry than their sort
of population count.
Like if we're 1%, we may have 1
.5% of the doctors or something like
this.
I only know New York City numbers.
I don't know national numbers.
But in addition to that, on the institutional
level, can you share with us some resources,
institutes out there, khair or otherwise, what exists?
So I would put ourselves last.
We are based.
Whatever it is.
Random sample.
Just give us something.
There are great initiatives being done or that
are in.
So there's a renaissance or reemergence of Islamic
psychology and we see that.
We have Maristan.
Big one is Khalil Center.
They have branches in New York and Chicago
and San Francisco and Canada and other places.
We have the Maristan based with Dr. Rania
Awad based out of San Francisco.
There's different institutions out there, but the idea
is we don't have enough.
We have efforts.
We need to bolster and support these efforts
and then we need to kind of have
similar, not duplicating, but depending on we need
to build a capacity and help them.
So you introduced me to the term peer
specialist.
I had never heard it before you brought
it along as sort of like the, you
frame it.
So peer specialist.
I'm still getting my grasp on what it
looks like, how we can sort of create
to them in our communities and the likes.
What are they?
So I will say there are peer specialists
in every Muslim community.
They just don't know they're a peer specialist.
Nice.
Because they may not know what they've been
doing, you know, just behind the scenes with
family, relatives, friends, is peer work.
Peer specialists, certified peer specialists, CPS, are mental
health professionals who have a lived experience with
mental illness or behavioral challenges or substance use
that Allah has blessed to recover in terms
of Muslims here.
Allah has blessed them to recover.
Even if they're not Muslims.
Even if they're not Muslims.
Right.
But we're talking in our communities.
Right.
So they're in recovery.
Their symptoms are not causing them dysfunction.
They're functioning.
They're progressing.
They're doing well.
And now they go through a credential training.
Every state has a credential training for certified
peer specialists.
So this is a thing.
All 50 states.
All 50 states.
Nice.
And the credentialing body gives a training.
It could be certain they're different in terms
of time commitment for different trainings.
But you go through a systematic training at
the end of which you take an exam.
And then you do your hours in supervision.
And then you become a certified peer specialist.
The idea is that we use our own
lived experience.
We use our own lived experience.
Not as a doctor to a patient, as
a therapist to a client.
It's more of like I'm a peer.
You're going through something and I've been through
something.
And this is what helped me overcome my
obstacles.
Let's figure out what are the obstacles that
are holding you back from living the best
version of yourself.
Let's work on them together as peers, as
brothers, as sisters.
Are these like...
I don't want to make the wrong analogy.
Are these like support groups that meet regularly?
Are these like one-to-one buddy groups?
Are these like ambassadors with the MHPs, mental
health professionals?
All of the above.
All of them.
So peer works...
So you have individual certified peer specialists that
work one-on-one with people.
You have family peers that are families of
those that had loved ones that they cared
for that went through these things.
And they've gained experience over the years helping
care for their loved ones who have experienced
mental health challenges.
And they've had a lot of experience on
how to deal with some of those things.
So families, they're family peers.
So there's different levels of peers.
This is awesome, man.
Keep going.
And so the idea is that we use...
And by the way, they work in hospitals,
clinics.
And they work in inpatient units.
They work in outpatient.
And these are jobs.
They're mental professionals.
And their expertise is their life experience.
So now we're starting to have this talk
in medicine that experiential expertise, as in our
life experience, is a form of knowledge.
And I agree with it.
People, you know, our mothers and our fathers,
you know, like our parents, they have certain
types of experiences over the years that is
a form of knowledge.
Of course.
And they should be able to share that.
No, and this is validating and grounded, like
validated Islamically that when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam says, the believer is not bit
from the same snake hole twice.
And that can also be extended to, you
shouldn't be bit from the same snake hole
that your brother got bit from, like learning
from each other.
And even we find sort of further substantiation
for that in Musa alayhi sallam telling the
Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, no, no, no,
I've experienced the people.
Ask Allah for a reduction in the prayers.
They're not going to be able to handle
it.
And so on the flip side, simply to
have someone that I've walked in your shoes.
I've been through this.
I'm a survivor as well.
Like you will get through it.
You know, I remember I've known the term
PTSD as a layman would.
I mean, post-traumatic stress disorder for a
decade before I actually learned that there are
people that were PTSD and they've sort of
transitioned to a better place.
And I'm like, oh, really?
They're like, yeah.
I felt like such an idiot.
They're like, Allah heals the body, the mind
the same way He can heal the body.
I was like, oh, wow.
He's like, yeah, so we don't have the
same triggers anymore.
We're not sort of unnerved by the dark
or whatever it was that there was their
particular trigger from their trauma.
And so to hear more about that from
the horse's mouth, right, for someone who's been
through it, deeply inspiring, right?
Absolutely.
And it's evidence-based.
There is a lot of evidence.
This is not just because in medicine and
science we need data, we need evidence for
it to be billed by insurances.
And so peer specialists have a body of
evidence behind that their outcomes are just as
good as medication, are just as good as
therapy, except the reason they're not so mainstream
is because they don't have the fancy titles
and the degrees.
Or maybe it's not lucrative for corporate.
You're this wonderful human being who could be
even working pro bono and you're not charging
anyone for it.
They're not appreciated.
And the fellowship that I'm currently in, I'm
so happy to be a part of the
Columbia Fellowship.
It's unique in the sense they hire peer
specialists, not as specialists.
We're 10 fellows every year in public and
community psychiatry.
They hire 10 people with a lived experience,
not as specialists but as advisors to us,
to fellows.
It's like, listen, yes, you're a psychiatrist, you're
a fellow, but I'm going to be advising
you.
This is exciting, man.
Flipping the script.
May Allah increase you guys, help take it
to the moon.
It sounds like it's just in its formative
phases now, the infancy of this peer specialization,
and I hope we can sort of optimize
it in our community as well, leverage it
because of the need is just so much
there.
I mean, and we've gone to communities and
they have, when we've talked about peer specialists,
they've reached out through our trainings and said,
how can I do this?
We help them with the resources and they've
gone on to become certified peer specialists.
So I'm going to send everybody to Khair
now.
Check the link of the video, inshallah ta
'ala.
So a little bit of a greedy question.
Traumatize the imams.
I don't even know if I am or
I am not a traumatized imam, but let's
be vulnerable to lead by example and sort
of model.
Let's subject ourselves to the possibility of needing
help.
I'm being a little bit playful here.
Yaqeen reports, right, you saw the numbers.
Of course, it is a limited sample.
Those that were interviewed, a few hundred imams,
20% are suffering from clinical anxiety, according
to the study, a little less than that
from depression.
Without getting into sort of the roots of
that and exploring it, there are other episodes
where we speak about the imam's struggles.
But what would your advice be for those
who clearly appear to be under great deals
of stress?
And also secondhand are constantly on the receiving
end, are almost like first responders, maybe the
vicarious secondhand element.
What do you advise?
How do we serve our imams a little
better?
I'm not an imam.
I'm a religious director.
But for everybody, inshallah, bismillah.
I think the important thing here is when
we now have some data, hopefully it's representative
of the larger sample as well.
Hopefully it's representative.
But when there are clinical concerns, and these
are not diagnoses, but concerns to further explore.
There's a concern.
It may or may not be a clinical
issue as a diagnosable issue.
However, when imams do their best in terms
of all of their supports that they have
and they still may have issues with anxiety
or depression, Allah sent the Quran and ask
the people of knowledge if you don't know.
And here the people of knowledge will include
the mental health professionals.
And so if they collaborate with them or
they seek some sort of therapy or treatment
or whatever they may need, or even just
a consultation to see what's going on, because
our biggest blind spot is to ourselves.
And if someone else can uncover that and
say like, hey, maybe perhaps if we try
something.
And if they have a good experience and
they're able to kind of have a support
that they can kind of share with in
a confidential ways, like someone on their side
and this decreases their level of stress and
it's like a processing type of mechanism.
And they can go back a little bit
lighter to their community.
And they can go back into their community.
And some of them may become peer specialists.
And it's like, hey, I'm a peer as
well.
And imagine the power, the influence if it
comes from an imam.
I mean, subhanAllah, we're talking about breaking stigma,
normalizing the conversations.
We're human beings.
The prophets were human beings.
Yes, their faith was impeccable, but we could
not remove the human experience.
I don't have personal experience with sort of
coming out to the community and saying I've
struggled with this and I've done that.
But just recently I was in London and
they asked me to mention just some tips
on sort of keys to a successful marriage
and the likes.
And I threw in there somewhere, I just
have no issue saying it, that I go
through sort of marital training.
I go through marital counseling.
I sort of, you know, you always need
to refine your craft.
You always need to make sure that you're
not blind to something that can tear down
your family and so on and so forth.
So I just mentioned it in passing.
I didn't even give all these justifications.
And I remember seeing some people in the
crowd, some of them are community leaders.
His hand flew up.
He's like, you do what?
Why would a sheikh?
And I had to sort of work him
through.
And I don't even think I gave him
a great answer at the moment because of
sort of I was jolted by his reaction.
He was not inappropriate.
But it was just his shock was kind
of like funny for me.
And I was like, what's the big deal?
Like, you know, even the best basketball players
still have to go to practice, except Allen
Iverson.
I know the joke.
It's getting old because he's been retired for
so long.
But he's getting in a lot of trouble
for not going to practice.
But even the best, right, will still continue
to practice, continue to check sort of like
what my Achilles could be.
And so I felt by the end of
it that it's like, oh, okay, so like
we can do this.
And we can admit this.
Is it okay?
Yes.
I wonder how everyone else heard it if
sort of a fellow leader heard it that
way.
I think it would be exponentially more consequential
and beneficial to speak about this on the
mental health level.
Yes, I do.
Yes, I've checked.
Yes, I've recovered.
Yes, I was in a sort of a
foggier place.
I can attest that this was better than
I thought it would be.
Absolutely.
And I'll tell you a funny story.
When I tell my colleagues we do couples
counseling, like me and my wife, we do
couples counseling.
You're a psychiatrist?
You do couples counseling?
But you know all this stuff.
Yes, but no.
Exactly like you said.
We have our limitations and we have our
blind spots.
When I did couples counseling with my wife
from medical school, up until I think we
were doing it for years, alhamdulillah, and the
amount I was able to understand through like
a neutral party, it's like, okay.
It's not the filter of the ego that's
interpreting everything.
And it strengthened our relationship, alhamdulillah.
I was able to understand things that I
never looked at.
Yes, I knew the theory, but in our
own life, it's hard to be objective when
we're dealing with our own families.
And even if you abstract this a little
bit before I wind down, we all see
Gaza as our families, right?
And so it's hard for us even to
say, no, I need a breather.
Like even imams, like they feel guilty to
disengage.
But you're not doing anyone a favor by
burning out or not recognizing that you're burning
out or stopping to check, am I burning
out?
You're actually becoming less and less productive, and
you still want to just keep swinging the
proverbial hammer.
And so it's all right.
These are our family, and we do need
to breathe so that we can serve them
better.
So we spoke about accepting where we stand
in terms of society and the Muslim community.
We spoke about how to work out some
of the stigmas, ironing out the stigmas so
that there's less friction in engaging this subject.
We spoke about relinking this to our tradition.
This is centrally Islamic.
The Quran and the sunnah and all of
this speak about seeking refuge with Allah from
anxiety, from depression, from grief, from sadness.
And, of course, our historical heritage and all
of these pioneering institutes or clinics and the
likes and research in psychotherapy, the importance of
creating fronts for collaboration, collaborative fronts, whether within
the boards or within the community discussions or
between at least an imam and an individual
professional, and then exploring the peer specialist world,
the community ambassador world.
Anything we haven't stated?
I think we've covered it all.
Alhamdulillah.
Alhamdulillah.
Alhamdulillah for that.
JazakAllah khair to everybody.
Look out for the resources in the description
of the video.
May Allah reward Dr. Ali Sayyid and his
team from Khair Collective.
And may Allah use us to better the
world around us and accept it from us
and forgive us our shortcomings.
BarakAllahu feekum.
Assalamualaikum.