Rania Awaad – Her Mind Her Strength Women Wellness & Empowerment – Mental Wellness Conference
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My many thanks to the Ministry of Women,
Family, and Community Development and to the Institute
of Social Malaysia.
It is an incredible honour to be amongst
all of you today, addressing this very important
topic of mental health and woman empowerment.
Today I would like to share with you
a little bit about this work and share
with you the work that we have been
doing in the United States of America and
at Stanford University related to this topic.
Our topic today is Her Mind, Her Strength,
Women's Wellness and Empowerment.
Before I begin, I would always so like
to make sure that we give our thanks
as thanks is due because we learn from
the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, whoever does not thank
the people has not thanked Allah.
And for that reason I would like to
thank my lab, Ritori, that's in Stanford University,
the Muslim Mental Health and Islamic Psychology Lab,
of which much that we are going to
talk about today is directly from that research
and that work.
Now to begin, I have a question for
all of you and that is, how many
here would say that they have faced mental
health struggles?
A show of hands.
Thank you for being so incredibly honest, masha
'Allah.
If I'm not mistaken, that is the majority
of the hands in the room and I
too would raise my hand as well.
May Allah bless you all.
Now my next question is, how many of
you have made efforts to alleviate these challenges
informally?
As in to say, friends and family, people
who are your neighbors, your aunties, those who
have are basically non-professionals, how many of
you would say that this is how you
alleviate your mental health struggles?
Thank you again for your honesty.
And then in terms of for the others,
how many of you would say that you
alleviate your mental health struggles formally, as in
to say with mental health professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists,
therapists, how many of us in the room
would say so?
What I'm noticing is a lot less hands
and this is very common actually in why
we're having this discussion today.
I hope insha'Allah that by the end
of this knowledge learning session, a knowledge sharing
session, that we're able to understand the importance
of mental health both formal and informal insha
'Allah.
Now I would like to tell you a
little bit about the work that we are
doing as we look to the Malaysian context
specifically.
In the Malaysian context, if we look at
the statistics that are there, you find that
one in three Malaysians actually experience mental health
issues and the largest number are actually the
adolescents, the young individuals, ages 16 to 19.
Also those who are coming from low income
backgrounds.
And this is very important for us to
pay attention to, to think about how it
is we form solutions that these are two
very important groups of people to work with
directly.
It could be financial difficulties or unemployment, it
could be work-related stress or family discord,
but the reality is the umbrella of mental
health is very wide and underneath it isn't
just diagnosable conditions like you might think of
depression or anxiety or trauma, but underneath this
wide umbrella of mental health we also include
things like parenting, intergenerational struggles between one generation
and the next, marriage, all of the different
contexts in which a person may have any
level of struggle actually fits into the mental
health umbrella.
And so with that it turns out this
is why the majority of us raised our
hand when I asked the question, how many
of us have faced mental health challenges?
Because the umbrella is quite wide.
And then from there we want to then
look at some more difficult statistics.
These are not easy to talk about and
I do issue my trigger warning as in
to say for a moment here I'm going
to talk about some difficult things and so
if it is difficult for you to hear
this please take a moment for yourself and
rejoin us when you're able to.
As I look to a very difficult topic
which I myself tend to call the taboo
within the taboo of mental health is the
discussion of suicide.
Suicide or taking one's own life is the
very end of the line of our mental
health challenges and struggles.
Oftentimes as clinicians and researchers we look to
suicide attempts and death by suicide to understand
how well is a certain community or country
doing with their mental health conditions.
In the COVID-19 pandemic the rates of
mental health challenges rose drastically and so did
suicide attempts and deaths by suicide.
It was a very difficult time I'm sure
many of us here can agree and a
time of isolation and a feeling of despair
or the anxiety around the unknown.
When we look here to Malaysia specifically and
compare it to other Muslim majority countries we
find that it is actually the second highest
country with suicide rates which means we have
some work ahead of us to do and
we are going to hopefully do all of
this together.
As we look then to mortality meaning death
by suicide you can see the numbers here
over the last 10 years have continued to
increase slowly but surely and what is missing
is the data from the COVID-19 era
in which unfortunately the numbers are even higher.
Now Malaysia is not alone in this context.
The United States where I am from has
actually similar numbers.
In fact the Muslim communities in America also
have an increasing rate of suicide attempts and
this means that this has become a global
issue.
Mental health is in fact a human issue
that many regardless of your faith, your cultural
backgrounds, your ethnicity, your social economic status it
affects all of us in fact.
I would like to take a moment now
and share with you some work we have
been doing in the United States with the
organization that I have helped co-found called
MADISTAN in which I hope to speak to
you a little bit more a little bit
later.
I was contacted by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services the HHS.
They said to me we want to create
a PSA meaning a public service announcement for
the Muslim communities of the United States.
However we know that in order to access
them the most important voices are the trusted
voices.
Well who are the trusted voices?
In our American Muslim context it is actually
our religious leaders, our imams and our shuyuk,
our ustads and our ustadas and so they
tasked me with the task of contacting the
big name imams and shuyuk and religious leaders
of America to make a video on the
new crisis line number for America which for
us is 988.
When the U.S. government moved the number
to this new number a couple of years
ago to 988 they said please help us
get this information to the Muslim community.
What I'm going to share with you next
is the video in fact that we created
on this topic so you may have a
sense of what we were able to do.
If we can play the video now please.
One of my earliest experiences with the topic
of suicide was actually the suicide attempt of
one of my own teachers of the deen.
He was an incredibly versed scholar of Islam,
a mufti and a hafidh of the Quran.
We students were shaken to the core.
We could not fathom or understand how someone
who was so learned in Islam could attempt
to take his own life.
During the pandemic I was contacted by a
grieving parent asking me if I was willing
to say a few words at her daughter's
eulogy.
Her daughter at the age 16 had died
by suicide.
A few years ago one of our daughters
who attended a local private Islamic school in
the area took her own life.
Her desperation led her to believe that there
was no way out.
She was beautiful, smart, feisty.
She was 12 years old.
We cannot afford to pretend that this is
not a problem in our community or we
cannot assume that this belongs to one demographic
in the community.
This is not a problem that is restricted
to any particular age or any particular circumstance.
There is such a thing that a person
is battling with suicidal thoughts, ideas that come
that are not necessarily stemming from a lack
of faith.
No doubt good faith and good family and
good friends help, no doubt, but there is
still such a thing as depression.
I want all of us, all of us
to work together to end the stigma of
mental health to provide the help that our
children need especially young people.
We have to refer people who are struggling
not just to the local imam but also
to train clinicians and therapists who can intervene
medically and clinically.
I encourage all of us to use 988
and have our community members, loved ones, and
families do the same right in that moment
of need.
988 offers 24-7 access to train crisis
counselors who can help.
If you need suicide or mental health related
crisis support or are worried about someone else,
please call or text.
To reach the lifeline, people can call or
text 988 or chat online at 988lifeline.org.
How did you find the video?
Thank you.
It's definitely been a work in progress and
I hope that we're able to work with
all of you here as well in Malaysia
for similar outcomes.
It has become very important regardless of our
faith background, regardless of our origins and social
economic status to understand mental health from a
universal perspective, a human perspective.
It is true that in many faith communities
that the religious leaders play a very important
role which is why we contacted them specifically
to give this important message.
It is my hope inshallah, God willing, that
as we're able to progress in these discussions
of mental health and mental wellness, things improve.
However, it may be some time before they
fully improve and by that I mean the
new advances related to technology, to AI, artificial
intelligence.
It is very likely that with the new
relations that are happening in technological aspects that
we might have worsening mental health outcomes before
we find better.
The reality of holding in the very palms
of your hand phones, tablets, in which information
is coming at you into your feed constantly
and in which, for example, and we must
note at this very moment our sisters and
brothers who are actually very much oppressed and
under attack, Palestine and Lebanon and Syria and
other countries at the moment and all of
our duas go for the sisters and brothers
of our ummah.
The fact that we can see moment to
moment what is happening in the palms of
our hands is very difficult.
In fact, the human being was not created
to withstand such images of horrific atrocities.
It is definitely having an impact on our
mental health and wellness.
Furthermore, as artificial intelligence continues to evolve, as
deep fakes continue to happen, it will be
very hard to distinguish what is real from
what is not real.
This too will have an impact on our
mental health and wellness.
And so we want to utilize all the
advances of technology to the best of our
efforts, but we don't want it to harm
us at the same time.
And this is a tricky balance to strike.
And so where do we go from here?
Well, the conversation then I'd like to turn
to women specifically.
Our conference and our discussion today is on
a woman's empowerment and mental health.
And you might wonder why.
However, the reality is every time we have
a program related to mental health, the majority
of the people in the room are in
fact woman.
You also find that the discussion and we
do welcome all of the men.
Thank you for being here.
But at the same time, we want to
say the importance of woman in a society
by empowering her, you're empowering literally the entire
society.
Women make up half of our global societies
and they raise the other half.
And so by empowering woman, you're also empowering
everybody in essence.
And so when we look at specific issues
related to women, what we find, however, is
often we are running ourselves empty as in
to say we are nurturers by nature.
So we give, we give, we give, we
continue giving.
However, we don't necessarily stop and refuel.
And in that way, I worry about we
running on empty and burning out.
It also turns out that our tradition, the
Muslim tradition that has in it universal principles
that are beneficial to all people.
I will draw today specifically from the Islamic
tradition as that is my own background and
for many in the room, but I want
to emphasize the universality of the teachings of
what it is that I'm going to share
that is really beneficial to everybody.
For example, there is a hadith of the
prophet Muhammad peace be upon him that says,
barely your own self has a right upon
you.
So break your fast, pray and sleep as
in to say, it's not that you are
meant to be somebody who's constantly praying, constantly
fasting, constantly up in prayer at night.
There's a balance that must be struck.
Also we learn from our traditions for a
woman, they are a decision makers.
So often they play this role of influencing
families and individuals, not just in their own
household, but there is a ripple effect.
And so if you're able to influence the
woman and give her and empower her with
strength and information related to mental health and
other forms of health and wellbeing, you're going
to be able to have a ripple effect.
Secondly, when we look at many of the
cultures and Muslim majority countries, you find that
there are traditional gender roles that sometimes put
social pressures on women and caretaking responsibilities tend
to be one of them.
Maintaining familial harmony is another one.
And also kind of adhering to cultural norms.
This also means sometimes masking or quieting stress,
anxiety, or even depression to maintain a strong
face or to then simply care for others
in your family.
You must, many people believe, have to not
show your own vulnerability.
However, this eventually takes a toll on women
and on her entire family and community.
Thirdly, I'd like to address the issue of
stigma, which I'll come to later again in
more detail.
And specifically today, I want to address issues
related to faith.
So often we find that faith is a
reason why people say that they're either able
to access mental health care or not.
As in to say, some people believe psychology
is too secular and it is not relevant
to them.
Others believe that if they have strong enough
Iman, faith, they should not have something like
depression.
However, that's simply not part of the tradition
as I will show momentarily.
It's not part of the Sunnah of the
Prophet ﷺ, nor the stories of the Prophets
in the Qur'an, our holy scripture, that
prove otherwise.
Oversimplifying what we understand mental health conditions to
be multifactorial, as in to say, there are
multiple factors as to why someone may end
up with a mental health condition.
Biology, genetics, environment, society around them, societal pressures,
in addition to spirituality.
It could be any overlapping concept of any
of the above.
Usually it's not just one thing that leads
to a mental health challenge or condition.
So if we look at things only from
a spiritual faith lens, you lose the other
aspects.
And if you look at it only from
a biological scientific lens, you also lose the
other aspects that contribute to mental health, which
means that we need to look at this
more holistically.
And now I'd like to turn your attention
to what it means to look at these
Islamic values that are, again, universal in principle.
I will be quoting a number of hadith
or narrations of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, and also from the Qur'an
to illustrate my points.
First, I would like to draw your attention
to a hadith in which there are two
sahaba, two companions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, and they are having a
discussion, a dialogue amongst themselves.
One of the sahabis says to his other
brother, Salman al-Farisi, and he says to
him, I'm going to fast all day.
I'm going to pray all night, and I
don't need to get married.
And his brother, Salman al-Farisi, corrects him,
and he says to him, your Lord has
a right upon you.
Your self has a right upon you, and
your family has a right upon you.
So give each one your rights.
And then this story reaches the Prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him.
And at that point, the Prophet Muhammad says,
Salman has spoken the truth.
And that is how we receive the story
of the two companions who are in private
speaking to one another, and we learn this
concept of balance.
The prophetic sunnah is one of balancing all
aspects, your own self-care, your own worship
and connection to God, and your family and
society that you're responsible for.
There were no reasons in the prophetic sunnah
to isolate just one of these aspects.
Another story for you that I think is
very powerful and has been very meaningful to
me.
We look, for example, here to a story
in which the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, sees a young Sahabi, and this young
man is entering into the masjid, and he
wants to catch the prayer.
He needs to pray.
And so he rushes into the masjid, the
mosque, and he does not tie his camel.
And so the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, calls him back, and he says, come
back, come back out.
What are you doing?
And he says, I have to go pray.
And he says, what about your camel?
And the man says, isn't Allah sufficient to
take care of my camel?
And this is where we get the famous
hadith where the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, says, as in to say, tie your
camel and trust in Allah.
This is very important because the Islamic worldview,
which again is relevant and universal, is that
we are twofold.
Our worldview is twofold.
We rely on God and we take measures
needed.
We tie our camels.
And so when we talk about professional care,
mental health care, if we notice within ourselves
or our family members that somebody needs help
and assistance, it is not sufficient, nor is
it enough in our tradition to just say,
I'm going to make dua for them.
I'm just going to make dua.
You say, I'm going to make dua and
I'm going to take them to get help
and assistance because maybe I am not trained
to be able to help them.
This is the prophetic tradition, the tawakkul, where
the dependence or reliance on Allah is in
conjunction with taking the steps and measures needed.
Furthermore, there are many stories in the Quran
of the prophets that talk about the struggles
that they all have went through.
Today, I will share just one because there
are so many, but I'll share from the
story that's found in Surah Yusuf about the
Prophet Jacob, Ya'qub, and his son Yusuf,
Joseph, and how his father, Ya'qub, suffered
greatly when Yusuf was lost.
He didn't know exactly where he was.
And as we know from the Surah, that
there was much, much that happened in Yusuf's
life until at the very end, they were
reunited.
But in the meantime, the scholars say there
was at least 40 years before they were
reunited together.
And in those decades, Prophet Ya'qub really
suffered greatly.
In fact, in the Quran, Allah describes the
condition of Ya'qub.
He describes his grief and his sorrow, his
intense amounts of crying, tears and tears, until,
as Allah says in the Quran, and his
eyes turned white from grief that he had
suppressed.
And the people around him, his own family
members did not understand his grief.
In fact, they gave him grief over it.
They gave him a hard time saying, isn't
this enough?
Isn't it enough that you keep on crying
and remembering Yusuf?
Let it go.
Let it go.
But the reality is he is a father.
And the loss of a son, in this
case, not even knowing is he alive or
dead, is so difficult.
Now, let me ask the audience here a
question.
As a prophet of God, would we ever
dare say that Prophet Ya'qub didn't have
enough Iman or faith?
No.
We know as a prophet of God, he
had intense amounts of faith.
So faith and sorrow or depression can coexist.
Another question for the audience.
Prophet Ya'qub is a man.
Today we have a conference about women.
And it is often as mothers, we raise
our boys.
And we often in many cultures and customs,
we raise our boys not to cry.
In fact, when they cry, what do we
say to them?
We say to them, don't be a girl.
We say to them, man up.
Here is a man, one of the best
of men as a prophet of God, who
was crying so intensely that literally his eyes
turned white from grief.
The scholars say, like a haziness, a loss
of eyesight.
Would we ever dare say Prophet Ya'qub
was not man enough?
I make these points.
And maybe I am pushing the envelope a
little bit here.
But I make these points because for the
many here who are Muslim, and even from
other traditions of Abrahamic faiths, we know these
stories.
We say these stories.
We know these surahs.
We know this concept.
Yet somehow there is a disconnect in our
own families and our own customs and cultures.
I encourage us, I encourage us to look
at the prophetic traditions.
And speaking of prophetic traditions, we will come
to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ very soon and
look at his own vulnerability and sufferings and
what to learn from them.
Before we do so, I'd like to just
make a point.
You may think that in me bringing up
the hadith and the Qur'an that maybe
I am pushing too much on spirituality and
religion.
You may think that I am saying we
should always look at things from a spiritual
lens.
No.
What I am saying is there must be
balance between all the different aspects.
I want us to take into account the
biological because our tradition has no problem with
science.
We never had a fallout between science and
religion as other societies may have.
We want to make sure we look at
the social, the spiritual, and the psychological.
Altogether, you end up with a much more
holistic understanding of the human psyche and how
best to treat our conditions.
So now back to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
A question about how did he deal with
his own challenges.
We know that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ as
is said in the tradition of Islam is
the best of all human creation.
The scholars say that he is the reason
literally for the existence of this entire universe.
This is the Islamic belief.
Yet he was sent to us as a
man, a human being, not as an angel
perfected.
No.
As a human being.
The most perfect of all human beings but
still a human being.
Meaning with struggles, emotions, and difficulties.
Loss of children.
In fact every single one of his children
ﷺ died in his lifetime except for one.
He buried them all himself except for one.
It tells us about the struggles and the
strength and resilience that was taught to us
by the Prophet Muhammad.
And so he often would teach us that
if Allah ﷻ wants good for somebody, he
actually afflicts them with trials.
This may be counterintuitive but it's very important
to understand the Islamic tradition.
Yusb minhu, literally he afflicts them with trials.
Why?
It's a kind of cleansing.
It's a kind of polishing.
You will not be polished unless you're rubbed.
And sometimes that rubbing is hard.
It's difficulties.
It's challenges.
You can have someone like Prophet Yaqub who
is deeply suffering yet deeply beloved to God.
And this is the teaching of Islam which
I believe has universal implications.
The trials and tribulations are also an expiation
of sin.
Meaning in the Islamic tradition we believe that
it actually forgives sin.
So we don't see things as tragedies.
We see them as a way of upliftment.
Even in psychology today, the understanding of trauma.
The newest research on this topic shows that
you can have post-traumatic growth.
That after a trauma, you can actually elevate
and grow as hard as that trauma may
have been.
Also we learn from the Prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, the saying, how wonderful is
the case of the believer.
There is only good for the believer.
When prosperity attends to them, they express gratitude,
shukr.
And that is good for them.
And when adversity befalls them, they endure patiently.
And that is better for them.
So we see this world in two ways.
We understand that both potentially can happen.
And we accept both.
And now, a very famous story of the
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and I
know for me personally, reading this narration has
really changed my perspective on grieving, on sadness,
on death, on bereavement, on grief.
As I mentioned earlier, the Prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, lost all of his children
except for one in his lifetime.
And here is a narration of the loss
of his own son, Ibrahim, who was a
young child.
And the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
had Ibrahim in his lap as this young
boy was taking the last breaths of his
life.
Imagine how difficult this scenario is.
And the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
starts to cry.
Tears start coming down his cheek.
And it amazed the Sahaba, the companions, his
companions who are sitting with him.
And they literally ask him, oh Rasulullah, you
cry?
As in to say they were curious, they
wanted to understand, is it okay to cry?
Again, as a man, as a Prophet.
And this is when the Prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, said his famous words, barely
the eyes shed tears.
And the heart is grieved.
But we do not say that except which
pleases Allah.
And then he looks down to his son
Ibrahim in his lap and he says, we
are saddened by your departure, oh Ibrahim.
It is powerful.
It teaches us, you can cry.
This is natural.
This is normative.
This is how Allah created humans.
And the heart can feel grief and sadness.
There is no shame in this.
But then look at the blessed Prophet and
the balanced tradition Islam strikes.
It says, but we don't say other than
that pleases Allah.
As in to say we don't push back
on fate.
We don't say how come me?
Why not someone else?
Not our tradition.
But we do understand that the departure of
our loved ones is hard and difficult.
And this is fully in line with the
sunnah.
And we're not meant to suppress emotions that
Allah has created for us.
Sometimes people believe that emotions are good or
bad.
There is no such thing as good or
bad emotions.
As in to say people think depression is
bad and happiness is good.
No.
All emotions, the entire spectrum was created by
Allah.
And all of us will experience some level
of it on the spectrum for different parts
of our life.
What's important is how you deal with it.
Not the fact that you have some sadness
or depression at some points in your life.
And so we continue the story about regulating
emotions.
And here too, I believe these are universal
principles that every faith and every background can
benefit from.
Look at the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad
in which he talked about anger.
Specifically, many of us know the narration that
the Prophet ﷺ said, if you feel anger
and you are standing, sit down.
And if you are sitting and you still
feel angry, lie down.
And another narration where he ﷺ said, anger
is from the devil and the devil is
created from fire and a fire can only
be distinguished with water.
So when one of you feels angry, go
make wudu.
My point in sharing these narrations that are
very famous and many people likely in the
room know them, is talking about emotional regulation.
We learn in our tradition, if you have
an anger problem, if you're easy to anger,
you must do something about this.
You can't just sort of say, this is
how God created me.
No, our tradition is twofold.
We must take measures to address whatever issue
nature or nurture came to us.
Furthermore, for me as a physician, as a
doctor, who works directly with patients, so often
my patients will say, a doctor, do I
really have to take medicine?
A doctor, do I really have to have
this diagnosis?
As in, they feel a sense of shame
about the conditions they may have.
And I remind them, again a hadith of
the Prophet ﷺ with universal values, in which
he says, to the people who are his
companions who are asking him, is it okay
to get treatment if we fall sick, if
we fall ill?
And to that he answers, In another narration,
he literally says, Oh servants of God, seek
out treatments, medicines.
But Allah does not send down an illness
except that he sends with it treatments.
And the only condition that does not have
a reversible treatment is old age.
Sorry, we can't have an elixir of youth
apparently, but we can find treatments for everything
else.
And when COVID-19 pandemic happened, I was
really heartened when I would hear people from
the Muslim community reassure one another with this
hadith and say, look, if Allah sent us
COVID-19, maybe right away in the first
few months, and even for you in the
first year, we didn't know what to do
with it.
But reassuring us if God sent down an
illness, he has also sent its treatment, and
they don't fall from the sky.
And now I speak as a researcher.
It is so important, imperative, that we take
efforts, that we do scientific experimentation, that we
spend resources and investments in figuring out how
do we treat the issues that we're seeing
in front of us.
And I'm very glad that many of us
today are able to be in a room
this large, masha'Allah, unmasked, as in to
say we were able to move forward from
the COVID-19 pandemic.
Truly, if God sends down an illness, he
sends with it either a treatment or cure.
Furthermore, for those who might be wondering about
what I said about medications, and for many
of my patients who get stuck on this
issue and say, I get it, I might
have depression or anxiety or OCD or phobia
or so on, but I don't really want
to take medication.
I remind them of another story.
And this time it is a teaching of
the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, to
his blessed wife, Sayyida Aisha, where he teaches
her that if she sees in the community
someone who is grieving, who is depressed, who
is sad, and particularly postpartum after delivery of
a baby, a sadness that may afflict, actually
the research is one in five women, which
means many of us in this room likely
have had a postpartum depression, that she is
meant to take to them something called Talbina.
Talbina was a dish made from barley, milk,
and honey.
And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said
that Talbina helps the ailing heart cope and
it relieves sorrow and grief.
Even the companions wondered about this and they
asked Sayyida Aisha, why do you take something
like Talbina to somebody who is depressed?
And she said, this is what the Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, taught me.
To me as a psychiatrist, this is very
interesting.
You see, she's giving it to cases of
depression, grief, not feeling well, any emotional and
psychological conditions that she's giving them something oral
to take by mouth to eat.
There is no issue in our tradition to
take by mouth something like a medication for
an emotional or psychological condition.
If it turns out that that is what
the science and research today has showed is
helpful for a certain condition, there's no issue
in our Muslim tradition to push back on
medications.
Furthermore, we know from the Prophet Muhammad, that
he often would feel a sense of relief
in prayer.
In the Quran, Allah says to us that
he has created us human beings in an
anxious state.
He's created us anxious.
In Surah Al-Ma'arij, Allah says that
we have been created anxious.
Think about that for just a moment.
Think about it for just a moment.
Humans are created anxious.
And then Allah explains what to do with
that anxiety.
And one of the main things that is
emphasized in that Surah about anxiety is, and
he says, that we have been created anxious.
And so it is no surprise that you
have the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
telling Bilal, his companion, who would call the
Adhan, relieve us from this anxiety, O Bilal.
Allow us to enter into prayer and relieve
ourselves from a sense of heaviness that comes
upon us.
Again, we are addressing a multi-faith room.
Understanding there are people from all different backgrounds
here.
Prayer, however, is universal.
Something you may pray differently than I might
pray.
However, prayer carries its weight.
And for so many people across the globe,
prayer is a coping mechanism, a positive coping
mechanism that they tap into.
Looking at the Quran and the Sunnah, is
there any contradiction with what I'm saying and
with medical science?
It turns out that actually, it is powerful.
And today, science has proven so many research
studies that having religion and spirituality as part
of your coping mechanisms actually is helpful.
But there is no issue to be able
to have dua along with action.
There is no problem in having tawakul, reliance
on God, and seeing your doctor or therapist.
It also turns out that when we look
at healthy coping mechanisms versus unhealthy coping mechanisms,
you see that in addition to things like
exercise, eating healthy, seeking professional help, problem-solving
techniques, all of these are useful in addition
to that spiritual aspect.
Whereas unhealthy coping mechanisms, using drugs or alcohol,
overeating, procrastination, sleeping issues, social withdrawal, self-harm,
aggression, all of these are not going to
be helping.
And so when we look at the healthy
coping mechanisms, we want to make sure that
we are consciously using them.
Furthermore, self-care habits.
And when I say self-care, so often
people get stuck on hearing me say selfish.
I'm not saying selfish.
I'm saying self-care.
Everything from the religious aspects like the dua
and Quran, going to the masjid and prayer,
as we already mentioned, but walking, exercise, nature,
socializing, good sleep hygiene.
It turns out that every mental health condition
is bettered by good sleep.
And every mental health condition is more detrimental
with poor sleep.
What else?
Mindfulness.
This is so common today as one of
the practices that are often prescribed.
And it turns out that this is deeply
connected with the Islamic tradition as well.
We know that mindfulness is going to reduce
anxiety, depression, blood pressure, insomnia, and the interesting
thing is it's a moment of pause and
relaxation in your busy day.
What do I mean by that?
Look at Islamic mindfulness, for example.
Those of you who are familiar with the
concept of muraqabah, literally to watch, observe, or
regard attentively.
In the Islamic context, we are taught to
take ourself to account before we're taken to
account.
And to do this on a daily basis.
If you look at some of the practices
of how to do Islamic mindfulness, or what
I like to call contemplative meditation, the concepts
of tafakkur, contemplation, pondering the meanings of the
Quran and the signs around you in the
world, tadabbur, and dhikr.
It's powerful what you can accomplish even in
a busy lifestyle.
I come from Silicon Valley in California.
It is a busy, busy, busy lifestyle.
And if you do not take moments of
pause and relaxation in your day, everything will
catch up with you and it will affect
your mental health and wellness.
Furthermore, I'd like to tell you something that
is helpful to me, especially in this year
that has been so incredibly difficult on our
ummah and on so many people globally and
around the world.
I've learned from my own spiritual teachers something
called the three R's.
The three R's.
To retreat, to reflect, and to remember him
often.
What do I mean by this?
Well, let me tell you.
I want to give this in the context
of women, which are the majority in the
room, but men too can absolutely benefit from
this too.
I want to channel a practice of the
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Even before he was a prophet, we know
that he would go and isolate and take
moments of pause and respite in the mountain
called Jabal al-Nur, the mountain of light,
in the cave of Hira, Dar Hira.
And he would do this so often.
And before prophecy came to him, it would
increase and increase the time.
It was like he knew something heavy was
coming and knew to take pause and needed
to really reflect mindfully every day.
After becoming a prophet, he then had a
tradition called i'tikaf, or a spiritual seclusion.
And this is one of his sunnah mu
'akkadah, confirmed sunnahs.
Why am I mentioning this?
I find as women especially, many women have
never tried the process of i'tikaf.
You ask many women, in fact, if you
don't mind, if I can ask this very
room, how many of the women in this
room have done i'tikaf in their life?
I literally am counting five hands in a
crowd of 1,500 people.
May Allah bless you all.
We are going to change that together.
Here's why.
As women especially, taking time aside from your
busy life, the children, the career and the
work, the cooking, the cleaning, the chores, the
chauffeuring the children around, or whatever it is
that might be happening in your life, or
even as a busy student, if you do
not take rest and repose, it will catch
up to you and have an effect on
your mental health.
And so, we as women actually have an
option in our tradition to actually do i'tikaf
in our very own homes.
For me, this has been a life-saving
practice, literally.
It has been so important for me to
take pause in my own home, on my
own prayer rug, in my own room, every
day, even if it's just moments in the
day.
Let me tell you why.
One of my teachers says, and you see
this picture of a pressure cooker.
How many of you cook with a pressure
cooker?
How many hands do we have?
Some people are happy with their pressure cooker.
Many people are quite scared of the pressure
cooker.
Personally, as I was growing up, I would
go to visit my grandmother's house and she
had the old version of a pressure cooker,
you know, the one that can explode.
And it did.
And as children, we would see in her
kitchen on the top of the ceiling, you
know, the effect of the pressure cooker that
exploded and she never used it ever again.
One of my spiritual teachers says, the valve
that allows the steam to go out is
what helps the pressure cooker not explode, right?
She says the valve is like the i'tikaf.
If you do not have a release valve,
all of that pressure continues to build and
build and build from your life every day.
Eventually, you may explode or implode.
It becomes so important to have these times
of khalwa, as in to say isolation, even
moments.
Personally, I tie this to my daily five
prayers and sit after my prayers for a
few moments and just contemplate, practice contemplative meditation,
these concepts from Islam, which may be familiar
to some of you.
The reason I'm emphasizing this is again, whatever
tradition you come from, and whatever you may
call this mindfulness meditation, or maybe you practice
this in some other form, taking pause is
universal and needed, and especially as women.
We must reflect and think about what is
happening in the societies around us, the individuals
in our life, even people that have given
us grief.
And I remind you a very important lesson.
In the Qur'an, we have the concept
of Pharaoh, as one of the most oppressive,
if not the most oppressive person that's ever
come to be.
And I remind you, and our teachers say,
if you practice this kind of ta'atikaf,
this kind of spiritual seclusion, and you reflect
deeply on your relationship with God, and your
relationship with people, and your relationship with society,
suddenly you come to realize that even Pharaoh
had Allah above him.
And it shrinks down everything back to real
size.
Our problems that seem really big start to
shrink down to real size again.
It is powerful, and I encourage it for
you.
Make it a habit to reflect and to
contemplate often.
And I also remind you that this concept
of, if you seek out help, seek it
from God, and there is no harm in
seeking help from the people who God have
put on our path.
And I also want to remind you, this
Islamic concept, that if bad was going to
come to you, it was meant and it
was written.
And if good is coming to you, that
too is written, and no one can interfere.
And the fate of God is our Islamic
belief, which is important because it gives you
a sense of relief and lack of anxiety,
because you know that God is in charge.
So now my question for the audience.
Take a look please at the slide.
I have a question for you.
It's multiple choice, and I'm curious why you
would think this statement would be inappropriate.
It says, Muslims do not get depressed, and
if they do, they just need to pray
more.
What do you think the answer to this
would be?
I'm getting cues in the audience saying, D,
all of the above.
And you would be correct.
It is true.
It's problematic to say this as a blanket
statement.
It's also problematic to say this and suggest
that religion is enough.
It's also problematic to disregard mental health services
and care, and actually to make sure that
we use both aspects.
And now this brings me to the last
part of my conversation about stigma and the
importance of understanding what stigma means and the
cost of it.
We can't afford to have stigma.
It is at three levels.
The first level is looking at this from
the perspective of your community.
If we have misinformation about mental health, if
we are unequipped with information on mental health,
if we have any sort of lack of
access to care and resources or discrimination as
in to say, if I were to say
something, I'll lose my job or stability.
This is reasons why people stay away from
getting help even though they need it.
If we look at it from a relationship
aspect, sometimes people isolate or they have family
conflicts or they don't have enough social support.
This too causes stigma.
One time I met a patient of mine
and I said to her, what is it
that took you so long to come for
care or therapy and help?
She had some very serious trauma.
And she said to me one time, many
years ago, I was sitting with a group
of people, women, like in a woman's gathering
and had nothing to do with her.
She heard, overheard two other women talking, you
know, as they are chit-chatting and two
other women talking.
And one said to the other, Oh, did
you hear that?
So-and-so started to go to therapy.
They're not talking about her.
They're talking about somebody else completely.
She's overhearing them.
And the other woman says to her, Oh
yes, she must be crazy.
And so the woman who became my patient
later said inside of herself, well, if that's
how they talk about our friend, I'm definitely
never going to therapy and getting help.
That kind of stigma is dangerous.
Literally, she just overheard a conversation.
It prevented her from getting help when she
needed to get help, worried about what people
are going to think of her.
Even we do this on an individual basis.
We say this about ourselves.
We'll say things like, I should be strong
enough and do this on my own.
I should have better self-esteem.
I can do this on my own, or
I'm simply just going to make dua and
read Quran.
And this is problematic too, because our tradition
is twofold, as we mentioned.
It's just plain dangerous.
And I hope that we're able to move
past this because the cost of mental health
stigma literally costs us lives and people.
After I've shared with you all of these
hopefully helpful things, but also heavy and difficult
things, I'd like to share a solution.
I don't like sharing difficult news about mental
health and telling you all the statistics that
are increasingly worsening without giving you a sense
of hope and where to go next.
Personally, in my journey, I've been thinking about
what does it mean to actually be able
to move the needle forward?
How do we make better steps and measures
to do this?
As you've seen in my slides, I've looked
into my own tradition, the Muslim tradition, the
Hadith and the Quran.
And then I started to look into our
Muslim scholars.
I'm very passionate about uncovering this history of
mental health from the Islamic tradition.
You know why?
Because when I was growing up, I never
heard anybody speak about the connection between mental
health and Islam.
In fact, I didn't even know we had
a history related to mental health.
And it wasn't until my own training and
my work in the community, as I was
serving as an ustadha and teaching, that it
became clear to me that there are mental
health concerns, but I didn't know how to
address them.
I wasn't trained in counseling.
I didn't know how.
And when I entered into medical school, I
planned to do something completely different than psychiatry,
subhanAllah.
But Allah, we plan, Allah plans, and Allah
is the best of planners.
And I was pivoted, pivoted into psychiatry, yet
didn't know anything about this field and had
a lot of suspicions about it because all
I had heard of was Freud.
I wasn't too keen on Freud.
And very Western Eurocentric kind of concept of
psychology.
In so reading about the early scholars and
their writings that quote the hadith and the
Quran, many of which I shared with you
today, I also came to understand that they
created institutions, not like you think of today,
not asylums like you might think of institution
today.
No, I'm talking about centers, centers of healing.
The Arabic version that I'm going to tell
you is Darush Shifa.
I know you have one here in Malaysia,
but today the Darush Shifa here in Malaysia,
maybe is much more related to the, only
the religious and spiritual.
I'd like to share with you a concept
that's much more holistic and integrated.
It has a spiritual, but also has the
biological.
It has emotional and the mental.
The Persian word for Darush Shifa is be
modest done, be modest done, shortened as Maristan.
And this is the name of the organization
I helped co-found.
And I'll share with you where women fit
into the story in just a moment.
But what are these centers?
Darush Shifa literally translates into a center of
healing.
How were they healing the people around them?
Because again, they heard the hadith, to every
illness, there is a treatment or cure.
And mental illness was no exception to the
rule.
My newest book is on the topic of
Maristan.
Inshallah, it'll be published in the next few
months.
Please keep me in your prayers.
And the work and research we were able
to show is that yes, all civilizations had
hospitals, but it was the Muslims who were
the first to our research and our knowledge
in human history to bring psychiatry, to bring
mental health into the hospital.
That's powerful.
And that's important part of history that I
personally didn't know.
It took a lot of research to figure
this out.
Why am I so impressed by this?
Because of the holistic nature of healing.
They did not discriminate between physical health and
mental health, just like they had surgical wards,
internal medicine, wards, ophthalmology, obstetrics.
They also had psychiatry.
And the way in which they treated the
patients in these centers is actually holistic.
They had pharmacies and medicine.
They had physicians and nurses.
They also had spiritual leaders, like today we
might call them chaplains, to remind the patients
to not lose hope in God.
And the ways in which they treated the
patients were very holistic.
Yes, they used medicine, but they also used
talk therapies.
And no talk therapy was not invented in
Europe.
The early Muslims worked heavily in the topic
of talk therapy.
My papers on Abu Zayd al-Balkhi from
the ninth century talks directly about the forms
of talk therapy that he talked about for
obsessive-compulsive disorders and phobias.
It is fascinating.
And it is very much similar to the
cognitive behavioral therapies we might use today in
the ninth century.
Also, they paid attention to all aspects of
healing, even the architecture.
When I think about Islamic architecture, I think
of geometry.
I think of ihsan, excellence.
Paying attention to every curve, every arch, every
dome had a purpose and a spiritual significance.
They had fountains because they knew the healing
property of water for cleanliness, but also the
listening of the sounds of water.
They used music, and our newest paper on
this topic is giving credit back to these
early scholars that used, medicinally used music therapy
for the treatment of psychiatric conditions.
They used color, they used sound, they used
diet, dieticians to make sure that what was
eaten is healing to the patient because food
can heal you and it can harm you.
They also made sure that everything was clean
and hygienic.
This very multidisciplinary care center called the madestans
of the early Muslim history, in my humble
estimation, needs to be revived once again and
bridged to modern science and psychiatric care and
the advances because we take all those advances,
welcome them, but there's something missing in the
modern psychology and psychiatry fields today.
There is a brokenness in the field that
can be bridged with a more holistic tradition.
So where is the role of woman in
this story?
It is incredible to me, in my research,
as I was writing about this, it wasn't
until I traveled and took my sabbatical and
started going across the Muslim world to visit
the Dara Shifas, the Bibadistans, and it wasn't
until I reached Turkey, because Turkey had the
latest, right, of the Muslim dynasties, the Ottoman
Empire, and so many of these institutions are
still standing today, and it was incredible to
me how many of these healing centers were
founded, funded, or endowed, or designed by women.
One of their sadaqah jariyahs, their ongoing charities,
was in health care and in education, and
they cared deeply about leaving something behind that
was still going to give them merit and
hasanat, good deeds, even after they've long passed
away.
They were key donors and supporters in the
endowments and the al-haf of these institutions.
We women have a role to play, and
I hope you'll learn more about this institution
of healing, because I do believe that it
is a way in which we can move
forward and start to bridge the very fragmented
way of healing that we think about mental
health today.
I hope the way we heal is more
holistically moving forward.
And with that, I introduced to you our
organization called Madistan.
It is still in its early and humble
beginnings, but there is much to be gained
already from the work that we've done, whether
it's our YouTube channel, whether it's looking at
the trainings, the publishings that we're able to
have.
We have a guidebook, for example, for those
who care about Palestine, a mental health guide.
We have another one specific to students, and
you can download them directly from the website.
We've written khutbas for the prayers on things
like mental health or suicide response already written
correctly with all the Islamic rulings of a
khutba and all the scientific understandings.
These are free and accessible to you.
Please join our healing circles and our learning
circles, because it is in these types of
resources that bring a very holistic understanding.
We hope and pray that there is to
be more benefit coming forward.
We hope that many of you will benefit
from these resources and actually be able to
complement the work that is happening here in
Malaysia.
And so as I close, I want to
give my thanks to the Ministry of Women,
Family and Community Development for taking on this
discussion on mental health and wellness, especially amongst
women.
And there are many principles that they guide
their work.
I'm very honored and excited to help complement
the work that they have been doing and
making sure that we're able to move the
needle forward for positive and excellent mental health
care and empowerment for women.
And with that, I think all of you,
I want to make sure you have resources.
These are your resources here in Malaysia, helplines
and information around mental health, and you're welcome
to scan the QR code if you're thinking
of how do I access mental health care
for my families and my loved ones here
in this country.
There are some excellent organizations and work that
have already started.
I hope you will benefit from them too.
And with that, I thank you greatly.
I thank all of the audience.
And I thank our Majesty, the Queen.
Most probably, there are a few questions by
the floor from the audience in the small
room to Dr. Rania.
Assalamualaikum, Dr. Rania.
My name is Azlina.
I'm a teacher educator from the National University
of Malaysia.
And I'm beginning to notice in my educational
institutions that there are more and more of
our students who suffer from mental health issues.
In each cohort, there'll be one or two
who has mental health issues.
And one of the things that I find
is that it's either that they tell us
personally that they have mental health issues, or
the other thing is it may be manifested
through their poor academic performance.
So as an educator, I do not feel
equipped to guide them in terms of mental
health issues.
And very often, we refer them to counselors.
But my question to you is, how do
we as educators, and particularly in educational institutions,
create spaces to discuss about mental health issues
and to de-stigmatize mental health issues among
our students?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wa'alaikumsalam.
Thank you for the question.
And here I'd like to share with you
a potential resource for you.
In the organization I mentioned earlier called Madestan,
we have a program specifically for students.
It may be a benefit for you to
look at how it is that we've been
addressing this.
It's called MMHI, or Muslim Mental Health Initiative.
The reason we took on this initiative, which
actually you can find a branch of it
in Stanford University where I'm located, also the
University of California, Berkeley nearby.
And the reason we actually put these on
college campuses and in other educational institutions is
because we are noticing that mental health conditions,
especially after the pandemic, have A, gone up.
B, the generations coming forward are more willing
to speak openly about the issues related to
mental health.
And, or as you mentioned, it may just
show up in their academic performance.
However, there wasn't really a space for this
kind of work, or the students had their
own stigma, as we talked about, from seeking
out supporting care.
So one of the things that MMHI program
does is provide psychoeducation, education around mental health,
open.
And we have this regularly, talks and webinars,
seminars, classes related to mental health, normalizing the
discussion.
Even some of the students on my campus
at Stanford University made a video, the Muslim
students made a video where they went around
from student to student asking, have you ever
had a mental health challenge?
And some of them started to tell their
own personal story if they were comfortable, but
it encouraged other people and normalized the conversation.
The program also brings in counselors because we
noticed they weren't accessing the mainstream counseling services
on the campus.
They wanted somebody from their own background, culture,
and faith.
And that was very helpful to integrate Islam
in this case, because they were Muslim students,
into the therapeutic process.
Once we instituted the MMHI program on the
campuses, suddenly we started to see people were
accessing the services.
In fact, every slot for counseling was taken.
And we increased the number of counselors and
increased the number of services because we saw
the uptake was happening better.
Sometimes you have to create space and create
the normalization in order for the students to
actually start to respond.
So I hope that is helpful to you.
And the MMHI program is available on the
website to look at more deeply.
Inshallah.
Assalamu alaikum.
First of all, I would like to thank
you for this wonderful presentation that really will
learn a lot about this topic.
I'm Adil Bahamid, ambassador of the Republic of
Yemen in Malaysia.
And by provision, I'm a medical doctor and
a teacher of community medicine in the Faculty
of Medicine.
Actually, there is one point I want to
raise here about the prevention.
Prevention is better than cure, as they said.
And I think as an international level, there
is a real need.
I'm not just talking about Malaysia, but maybe
about my country and many other countries, whether
Muslim or non-Muslim countries.
We need a lot to do in regards
to prevention in order not to reach to
these psychiatric diseases or illnesses or all these
problems.
So that's why I think there is a
real need in order to design a national
program for prevention and also for empowerment and
mental wellness.
And this one will need the efforts of
everybody in the society, not only the Ministry
of Health or those who are related to
the medical issues, but also the Ministry of
Education, the Ministry of Media, the Ministry of
Religious Affairs, and everybody should be on the
board.
So I think it's time to design such
a national program that will prevent the new
generation from getting to these illnesses and diseases.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
It's wonderful to have you here and ask
this question.
And I absolutely agree that prevention is better
than actual having an illness and then needing
to treat it.
This is very true.
From the public health framework, we understand that
if we are able to do prevention, we
won't actually go all the way down the
line or as far down the line in
order to then treat the conditions that have
worsened over time because there hasn't been direct
help early on.
Even early intervention is better than later intervention.
So what do you do for prevention?
In the model that we have, I shared
a little bit about the model of Badistan
as the healing center.
Something I didn't share, which is very important
to me, is there are two branches to
the work we do.
One is educational because that is where the
prevention work happens.
It is getting down into the very communities.
It is training our EMMs. We have an
entire training just for our Ustaz on suicide
response, for example, and other mental health conditions
because we know there are frontline responders.
We also have these webinars and learning circles
related to this topic because if you can
have early detection and early intervention, you are
much better apt.
The second half of the work, two parts,
is clinical because then you need to have
implementation of the theoretical education and research.
There must be direct implementation.
But I agree with you greatly that having
a national prevention work will go a very
long way.
So thank you for this.
Thank you, Dr. Rania.
And we still open to the floors for
the Q&A session.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Assalamualaikum, Dr. Rania.
I don't know whether you remember, I was
a student at CMC and you are a
wonderful teacher.
My question is, after I got back from
CMC and I got more directly involved in
counselling and psychology in Malaysia, after talking with
many counsellors and psychiatrists, I realised that many
of them are shy or reluctant to use
our Islamic universal values in their treatment.
There is this unconscious or maybe conscious resistance
because they were never taught this.
I mean, for me personally, I didn't even
know about our rich traditional heritage of Islamic
psychology until I went to CMC.
So I appreciate this resistance.
But I would like you to have a
much more wide exposure and experience.
How do we encourage or reassure our counsellors
and psychiatrists to come out of the closet
and really make use of our own tradition?
Because most of our clients are Muslims.
Yes, we are a multinational country, but you
could say safely 60% of the clients
are Muslim.
So it's very, in my opinion, shameful that
the Muslim psychiatrists and counsellors dare not use
what is an indigenous psychology that we have
in our hands.
So, Dr. Rania, if I can have your
comment on this.
Thank you.
Engaging from the applause of the audience, I
think many agree with you.
I first have to say it's wonderful to
meet our students wherever we travel.
CMC, for those who may not know, is
Cambridge Muslim College, and it has a diploma
on Islamic psychology that I'm fortunate to teach
in.
And so it's wonderful to have students, even
from Malaysia, subhanAllah.
Every cohort has had Malaysian students, and it's
wonderful to have them.
Alhamdulillah.
What you speak to definitely speaks to me,
because I entered into the field with a
lot of suspicion and trepidation, because I wasn't
sure what psychology was exactly, and came to
it very late in my training.
I had already trained in the classical Islamic
sciences.
And so for me, my first question was,
well, what did Islam have to say about
all of this?
So I went about it the other way.
For many people, the very first thing they
do is they're in the psychology programs that
are, today, modern psychology is Western psychology.
It is coming from a Eurocentric frame.
It has its biases and limitations.
And there is a lot of benefit, no
doubt, but there's also blind spots and limitations.
There isn't enough adaptation to cultural and religious
norms.
For the students, or for the clinicians, rather,
that you are mentioning who feel a little
bit hesitant or shy about using religion in
psychology, I want to share with you, and
here I share with you as a professor
and as a researcher, that there is an
entire emerging subfield of psychology called RNS, religion
and spirituality in psychology.
There are so many papers and research studies
and experimentations that are showing the direct impact
of spirituality and religion on one's mental health
and well-being, as in to say even
Western psychology is catching up with the concept
of integrating religion and spirituality into care for
more holistic care and background.
So it is not just the Muslims.
I'm actually part of a team nationally in
America made up of people from Muslim, Jewish,
Christian, Hindu, Buddhist backgrounds who are all looking
at spirituality from their different perspectives and making
sure it is integrated in.
Again, universal power for this.
So I encourage you to understand that the
wave of psychology, as it's moving into the
future, is becoming more inclusive.
It is actually saying, look, if we're going
to bring all of our identities to the
table, and we are people who are coming
from a faith-based, God-centered identity, then
that too is an identity that must come
to the table.
You don't check God at the door before
therapy.
And you don't say, this has nothing to
do with us.
The reality is, all humans have a soul.
And even if the field of psychology today
has become soulless, as in to say, they
no longer study the soul as they once
did early on, because they can't reproduce it
and touch it.
But Allah told us this in the Quran,
that the Prophet Muhammad was taught, they will
ask you about the soul and say, it
is a matter of my Lord.
I've only given you but a little bit
of knowledge.
But at the end of the day, all
humans have a soul.
And so the concept of Islamic psychology is
to bring the soul back into the discussion
of psychology so that it is much more
holistic and well-rounded.
So I encourage everyone here who's listening and
interested, if it's piquing your interest, take a
look at what Islamic psychology has to offer
today.
It is a reviving and emerging field that
I think is going to be an excellent
way of addressing mental health conditions in Muslim
-majority contexts, but actually universally, inshallah.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Rania, we are running
out of time, so we give one final
question for the audience.
As-salamu alaykum, Dr. Rania.
Thank you so much for your knowledge, alhamdulillah.
I think I asked this question on behalf
of teachers and educators in this room.
Handling the current generation, the Gen Zs, the
TikTok generation, I think many of my colleagues
and teachers and fellow educators can agree with
me that it is a challenge.
And what is your advice with the expertise,
doctor, to handle the mental health of this
small range of 10 years old to 16
years old, but the most challenging age group
in this world?
Thank you, doctor.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question.
And yes, it is true.
And there's so much discussion around Gen Z
and now Gen Alpha and the discussions on
all these different generations of people and what
that all means.
I'll say this in brief.
I may have a different perspective, actually, on
Gen Z.
I know as educators and even as parents,
I have children in this age group myself,
and it is challenging.
It is in fact challenging.
However, I have to say that I am
impressed with their willingness and openness to talk
about mental health and mental challenges, to talk
about the vulnerability, to talk about difficulties and
normalize it and not shame each other or
hush each other because they have said it
is difficult.
Where they will look at even Olympians who've
taken a break for their mental health condition
and say, good on you that you prioritize
your self-care before a medal.
The reason I think that this is important
is because it is different than previous generations.
They are difficult in their own ways.
They came through the COVID pandemic era.
There are different issues with socialization and other
aspects that we as educators and parents might
find challenging, but I think we should capitalize
on their strengths.
Look at it from a strength-based perspective
as opposed to the opposite.
Look at what they can offer versus where
they're challenging us.
Take the diswillingness to be vulnerable and to
talk openly about what is difficult and channel
that into help and resources.
Make sure that you give them the confidence
and the ability to say you and I
can get better and that you are, meaning
the Gen Zs are the future of our
countries, of our civilization, literally, and if we
can empower them with this so that they're
not as fragile as they currently are and
they're not as self-centered as unfortunately the
TikTok and social media world makes people to
be, you can empower them to become those
leaders as they emerge into from adolescence into
young adulthood and actually use that willingness, openness,
and vulnerability to be better parents, to be
better employers and employees, and to be better
servants of God.
I believe this firmly.
I actually have a lot of hope in
these next generations and I hope, inshallah, that
we, the other older generations, can look at
them for their strengths and be inspired by
them as opposed to challenged by them, inshallah.