American Muslim

Ending the Silence

Asalaam Alaikum (Peace be with you),

As many of you know from some of my past posts - "I'm Speaking at ISNA" (Aug. 2008) and "Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend" (July 2007) - I have a deep interest in areas of mental health awareness and suicide prevention from the loss of three friends to suicide. As I have said in conference presentations and while giving the khutbah (sermon) at Friday jumuah, Muslims have to immediately break the silence about mental health and strip away the hubris that enshrouds our inability to reach out to those with mental illnesses. It is because so many Muslims and whole Muslim nations and communities refuse to admit that depression is rampant does it becomes hard for Muslim counselors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists to make inroads into these areas and reach people in need.

I read a particularly shocking article about this recently in The Chicago Tribune last week about the abysmal state of mental health facilities in Afghanistan. This is not that surprising since by most measures, Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa and already has terribly low health standards and facilities. Who can forget the scene in Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns when the woman has to give birth via a C-Section without anaesthesia because none is available?

Anyway, Kim Barker's piece is even more terrible than one can imagine because it mentions not only the lack of infrastructure and medical facilities for the mentally ill over there, but also the total lack of knowledge that abounds. In this petri dish of ignorance, myths and superstitions - which are already unIslamic and not founded in Qur'an, hadith or other sources - are allowed to fester. As Barker writes, "Wali Sultani has been chained to the wall of his cell for almost a month. He is wearing the same dirty clothes and he is the same diet every day - bread, black pepper and water. Sultani, 25, is no criminal. He is mentally ill."

So, what can we do? We need to actively try and discuss mental health issues with greater urgency among the Muslim community. This is my goal as it relates to not just this issue, but other social dilemmas like child abuse, domestic violence, rape, incest and others that exist in Muslim communities across the world. We need to talk about all these issues so that we can help those in need.

Although I have not finished my doctorate in political science, I am in the process of going back to grad school though not in political science. I am exploring a few areas, most notably educational policy, educational leadership, higher education and educational psychology. This is the essay I wrote for the M.S. in School Psychology program at Georgia State University - my alma mater for all my M.A. and two years of doctoral work in poli sci.
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Career Goals Statement for Masters Program, School Psychology:

There are secrets and then there are secrets. The former might be those things we whisper to one another, with promised oaths, but that we somehow masochistically wish other people would know about us. And then there are the secrets that burden us for the rest of our lives as we strive to do anything – or everything – to make them remain hidden or go away, at least long enough for no one to find out. These are the things that we wish to truly remain only between God and us.

For Muslims, suicide and depression are viewed as the latter kind of secret. There are many depressed Muslims in the U.S. and around the world, but instead of helping our family members and friends suffering from mental illnesses, many Muslims choose to avoid the topic altogether, making the very thought of intervention taboo. And nowhere is there more a pressing need for intervention and prevention of depression among Muslims then in middle and high schools, where there is an abysmal lack of care available for depressed Muslim teenagers. If we know that counseling and therapy are only as effective as the cultural parameters they embrace, then how come more isn’t being done to train a new generation of school psychologists for Muslim schools to provide creative therapies to ameliorate the lives of these troubled children?

In the last seven years, I have lost three friends to suicide. Although each death has hit me in a particular way, all the experiences have allowed me to truly understand suicide in a way I never thought I ever would and as such, these events have led me to pursuing suicide prevention as a career. In the last two years, I have given several presentations on this topic (see CV) and have also started my own non-profit, the Muslim Suicide Survivors Association (MuSSA).

While working in two Chicago-area Muslim schools for much of the 2007 – 2008 academic year, I realized that many children were falling through the cracks right in front of me in terms of their special needs. Although the average American Muslim school might have a counselor on staff, such a person does not necessarily have to be a trained counselor and may not even have a degree in psychology or counseling.

Georgia State University has already provided me with so much in my life through my four years of graduate studies in political science. However, I am now in the process of changing careers and see the M.S. in School Psychology as the ideal vehicle to make this change. My goal is to obtain the M.S. in School Psychology from Georgia State and then acquire a doctorate in the same field to become a voice for these Muslim children and increase awareness on the subject of Muslim School Psychology. And I believe that the faculty and teachers at my alma mater, Georgia State University, can really help me achieve my unique goal, in’sha’Allah (God Willing).