 As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh According to CDC, there has been a 33% increase in suicides within the last two decades. Suicide death occurs every 11 minutes in the United States. And for every suicide death, there are at least 20 attempts. Our own Muslim community is not immune from this. One in three Muslims report feelings of suicide or thoughts of suicide in therapy. There are so many challenges that Muslims face which create concern for suicide risk. Among them social isolation, racial and ethnic discrimination, Islamophobia, anti-Muslim assaults, and psychological distress. Our community in Allen, Texas experienced a heavy tragedy when the lives of an entire six-member household came to a sad end due to a murder suicide. Now although our community faced the brunt of that grief, the shockwaves were felt way beyond our city and our national borders. When it comes to suicide, it's fully understood in the Muslim community and way under research. And our imams are not well equipped to deal with these issues. Unlike other medical related deaths, suicide is 100% preventable with the proper support and tools. And we of the religious community need to train our own leaders to be the first line of defense. The good news is that the Stanford Muslim Mental Health and Islamic Psychology Lab has developed an evidence-based, in-depth suicide prevention, intervention and post-vention training. The post-vention or crisis response has been utilized in many Muslim communities throughout the U.S. I was fortunate enough to attend Dr. Rania Awad's emergency suicide post-vention training. I myself have attended an online session and found it very beneficial. I felt very blessed to have attended and wished that more of our community members, in particular our religious leaders, could also benefit from the powerful and critical training that we received. I came out of that phone call with an outlook on the issue of suicide that we don't really study in the books of tradition. I benefited from that session, but I know that so much more needs to be done. I urge you to back this project. I urge you to contribute towards this project. Please support Madestan's mission to train 500 religious leaders by 2022. We want you to give to this cause generously because it's extremely important and valuable and it's life-saving training. It's our responsibility to prevent any other suicide in our respective communities. And remember that Allah SWT tells us that whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved the life of all of humanity. And you won't know whose life you will be changing or whose life you will be saving. Please be sure to share this campaign with your friends and family. Jazakumullahu khayran wassalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu. Thank you. As-salamu alaikum and welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for our learning circle on suicide prevention in the Muslim community. My name is Bismir and I'm the lead of Maristan's Community Suicide Response Training, also known as the 500 Imam's Religious and Community Leaders Campaign. For those of you that are new to Maristan or have never heard about Maristan, Maristan is an organization that is a clinical, educational, and research-based initiative inspired by the holistic Maristans of Islam's historical tradition. And Maristan's goal is to revive the Islamic tradition of Maristans by leading professional clinical care, education, and research in advancing holistic mental and spiritual wellness. Just a tiny bit of history on what Maristans were in the past. So Maristans were institutions of holistic healing and Islamic civilizations of the past. And they were also the world's first treatment centers for treating psychological illnesses. So here at Maristan, we're really trying to revive that tradition in our present day Muslim communities. So what are learning circles? Maristan's learning circles aim to provide regular, community-focused educational programming to support the holistic spiritual and mental health needs of Muslims. Through these communal gatherings, we hope to connect with scholars, with mental health professionals, and spiritual leaders who will help illuminate our path to well-being. Now moving on to some of our housekeeping rules and agreements that we make with each other as we enter these healing circles is to purify our intentions and to seek knowledge for the sake of Allah. We treat everyone respectfully within these learning circles. We listen with compassion and curiosity. We share our words or our silent presence. We withhold judgment and share and avoid sharing opposing views. And we keep our comments relevant to our current discussion. And there will be absolutely no disrespect or derogatory commentary that will be tolerated within our learning circles. Now to introduce today's topic and our objectives, our first objective is to learn about the early signs that lead to suicidal ideation amongst the Muslim community. The second is to learn about how to actually address these early signs. And the third is to learn about active measures that we can take when a loved one discloses suicide ideation or attempts, and to learn how to protect our community as a whole. We are very excited to be learning about this subject from our first speaker who is Dr. Rania. She's also the executive director and co-founder of Madison. And then we would like to especially thank Imam Mohamed Magid for joining us. And he is our guest speaker from the Adam Center. And you can find out more about them through their bios, which will be pasted in the chat shortly. And so a little bit about our agenda for today. So we're going to be starting off with Dr. Rania, who's going to lead the first half of the program with the introduction. She's going to talk about the early signs. She's also going to speak about addressing the signs and active measures. And then the second half of our program is going to be with Imam Magid. And we're going to talk about how we can actually use protective measures to protect the community as a whole. And now I will pass it on to Dr. Rania to begin. Thank you so much Tasmeen. Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu. Thank you everybody for joining us. And alhamdulillah it's wonderful to be here with everybody. I'm so glad that we are using this time of September, which is Suicide Awareness Month and Prevention Month for having this discussion. Also recognizing that we have pressured in Rabiaan 01 in the Islamic calendar. And this is a special course month for all of us who are Muslim. And kind of bringing the two worlds of people together and discussing this very difficult subject around suicide and as well about Muslims at this time. So with that in shalom I'm going to first begin by giving my trigger warning by saying that this is, I know all of you signed up for a suicide prevention discussion, but nevertheless please know that we may be discussing aspects here that could be a little bit difficult at times. And so if you find yourself having a difficult time with this, please give yourself some time, some moments, allow yourself to take a break and step that out and back in if you'd like to and shalom off. And feel free also to reach out to all of us through or to reach out to us through the chat and let us know if you're having a particularly difficult time, we'll do our best in shalom to address your concerns with you. Now in shalom, I want to just confirm that you can see my screen, which I hope is happening here. Hopefully. I'm sure that's the case. And in shalom what I'm going to do is start in shalom with a couple of slides related to suicide prevention within the Muslim community specifically. This conversation in shalom is one of utmost importance in very near and dear to my heart. It is something that is difficult to talk about within the Muslim community and we have experienced many losses in subpoena also because there is research that has been conducted on behalf of within the Stanford Muslim mental health and Islamic psychology job, which I lead, and it's been very eye-opening. In fact, I think I personally approach this subject completely expecting something different. But finding that it's done having a lot of solutions and answers for us, but that we as Muslims may not actually be tapping directly into those resources for help and care. So the fact that our faith promotes well-being and seeking out health and care when needed, but often there is a lot of stigma and difficulty in doing so. So that's how I'm going to practice what I say here in shalom. And I also would like to say that this particular training is not sufficient here are some disclaimers. It is not sufficient qualification after attending a seminar like this to be considered a mental health expert or an expert on suicide, not that anyone here thought so, but I'd have to give the disclaimer. And also that while we are trying in shalom to improve our knowledge base related to the topic of suicide, please know that this is really in order to allow you to know this information better and hopefully be able to help others around you. However, the contents here are not sufficient. Nor are they meant to allow anyone to be able to do a formal assessment or diagnosis or treatment of suicide or suicidal behavior or any mental health condition. That is class to be done by trained professionals. Again, saying, hopefully I'm stating just the obvious, but I need to say so now for this. Also, please know that this program is not intended to be a replacement for professional mental health care for individuals who are struggling with mental health difficulties or anyone who is dealing with the difficulty of thoughts about harming themselves. And so we must refer them to appropriate care. And we will go through that today in shalom. I actually hope that this training will be very practical and that you're able to walk away with some hands on tools in shalom. I also want to say please know that suicide and suicidal behavior is almost always an emergency. I've received messages, the most recent just earlier today, giving me discussions about a person's child and, you know, to me, all kinds of red flags are happening. They're like, this is a crisis, an emergency. Please take this child to care. This is not a time to ask about opinions and maybe I should, you know, maybe this or maybe that. These are emergency situations. And in shalom, we're going to do this together to explain and break down. One is an emergency. One is not and what to do about it in shalom. We've got in shalom. I want to share my utmost gratitude and thanks for a very, very large team of people who have all contributed, many of whom are part of my lab at Stanford University, the mental health and asylum psychology lab, who have worked very hard over the last five years developing materials that led to the creation of a manual on suicide response and missing communities that then was adapted into modules of training that I haven't even been able to launch. Those of you who saw the video that was at the very beginning of this presentation know that we have something in this year that was called the 500 Imams campaign that was launched by Madison. And at this particular campaign is within this year of 2022, we wanted to reach at least 500 Imams and community leaders who are at the front lines of various missing communities to train them on suicide response. Please know that what you're going through today, and shall I decide that we're going to cover today are a tiny, tiny fraction and snapshot of that training. The training itself is actually an eight hour full day certification training. And in shalom, we have trainings coming up in November in Dallas and New York and shalom for the remainder of this year. And then we have several more in shalom, we planned out for 2023, including some virtual trainings. We hope in shalom, you will be encouraged by what you're receiving today to be able to then sign up for the full certification training. And our five year goal is to go from the 500 that we've trained hopefully by this year's end. And in five years, we've gotten, we've been able to train the 3000 massages across the United States in shalom. And perhaps we expand worldwide. Please keep us in your duos and please do consider it even contributing to this campaign because we allow for speed up from those donations. We allow for scholarships and for people who otherwise couldn't pay for the training to be able to pay for the entire certification training, or and or you can sponsor your Imams, your youth leaders, your Sunday school teachers, Islamic school teachers, anyone who's at the front lines of your communities. So please be in touch with Madison about that. And we'll give that announcement again to you next time. Without inshallah, we're ready to begin. This is not a campaign. This is a lot of money has been in the ground. And it's up to you to send it back to me where I'll begin. Inshallah, our discussion today in our training is about language. Language is incredibly important. And we talk about a topic that evokes such strong emotions, such as the topic of suicide. It is really important to understand the correct language to use because it could be that somebody is struggling. But you say something totally not meaning to hurt that person or upset them, but an inadvertently does. So one of the very first things that we learn in our training today is the importance of appropriate language. Please know that suicide is considered to be a clinical issue. This is not something that people are just making up. It is something that is well studied rigorously in medical and clinical settings, and that it is professional clinicians who deal with suicide. Now, in terms of the terminology, there are some important words here that I'm going to break down so that we are able to understand them because often they get just confused. And sometimes when reading a research or understand hearing stats, it becomes really confusing. Well, that's what exactly. When we say suicide, what is that word? It means that this is a death in which there was evidence that the person themselves self inflicted harm onto themselves with the intent to decease themselves, to kill themselves. There is a difference, however, between death by suicide or completed suicide versus suicide attempt. These words sometimes are just called suicide and people don't clarify is it actually death or was it just an attempt not to say that it's just an attempt, but there is a difference between an attempt and. A completed suicide. This becomes important later when we talk about numbers with the missing community and what that all means. So what is an attempt? An attempt is self injurious behavior that an individual may or may not have intended to die by. So at this point, we'll learn about how an attempt with these really important when it reaches an attempt level to really escalate hope and professional hope and right away. Ideation is another word that's used. Suicidal ideation, which basically is a fancy word of saying it is thinking about or considering death by suicide. It is something in which a person may think about dying, but doesn't actually take any of the steps to harm themselves or planets out in any way. There are differences between ideation attempt and, of course, death by suicide. They are different levels for layers and the way we approach them as parents, loved ones, community members, and moms depends on whether it is an ideation level, an attempt level or, of course, an unfortunate aftermath of the death by suicide. Further, a couple more words that are important to define is the word of victim. What they mean by suicide victim, they mean by a person who has died by suicide. Survivor is a person in the literature that they refer to as someone who's attempted suicide, but survived. Then you have the belief or the lost survivor. Who are these people? They are friends or family of those who had a close relationship with the victim of suicide, someone who died by suicide. And they're the friends and family who are left behind. We refer to them as the belief or the lost survivors. Why am I going through all the pains of having a really defining these six terms clearly, hopefully, clearly, inshallah, is because it really makes a difference for us to know the red flags to understand, is this currently an emergency? Do I have to do something right now? Or is it something that a person can seek help for over time? Or is it something that is a chronic condition that keeps coming up that may not be as an emergency as something, for example, like an attempt? So when we talk about language, please take a close look at the slide. Also, we publish an article and we can put it into the chat box and show while we have a couple of articles actually on Muslim matters that are that this chart you'll see there as well. There's tables and charts about language, what to say, what not to say, how to better say it. One of the most common things I find that people tell me is if they're friends and family, someone who's going through suicidal ideation, thinking or even attempt, even imams have reached out. Shehat and imams have said, I really want to help counsel this person, but I have a loss for words of what to say. So here this chart can help. I hope inshallah about the dos and don'ts of the words we choose and how we speak. To say something like our community must be vigilant in order to stop more young people from succumbing to the darkness of suicide. It would not be appropriate. It would be better to say suicide is preventable. And we can come together as a community to avoid future losses. Excellent, that is appropriate and it is true. Like the video you just watched, if in fact, with the right knowledge and the right tools, we find that suicide action is prevented. And that's why we're having these trainings. I'm so glad. Thank you all for being so glad you came to me. Now, let's try not to allow in your hands lying, saying inshallah. It would not be appropriate to say after months of battling depression, they gave up and committed the ultimate and very dramatic language, right? Instead, it would be more appropriate to say we cannot know what may have caused this brother or sister to take their own life, but we can make du'aq for them in the afterlife and for their believed loved ones. Now, in our training, and again, this is just a snapshot, a tiny little snapshot of our big eight hour certification training, full day training. One of the things that we learn in that training is dealing with some of the 50 or Islamic illegal aspects that only seem to come up. Can I pray for the person who's died by suicide? Can they have a gymnasium funeral prayer? Are they to be buried in the same graveyard as other sisters? So on and so forth. We deal with all of this in our manual and in our training. And I know we have in our magic today, inshallah, and I'm sure he will touch on some of this as well. It is so important and so relieving to those who have had the unfortunate circumstance where their family member or loved one has taken their life. And that I'm wondering, can I pray for this person? So we deal with all of these aspects. It is really important to choose the correct language and to have appropriate knowledge before we speak. The last sentence is really heavy. It says on the don't side, it says they're going to hell for tyranny of sex. I don't know about you, but I've heard this so many times in my life. And it is so important that we're very careful about something. I'm very clear about my words and I want you all to hear it clearly and that nobody walks out of this training saying, Gakran is normalizing suicide. I am not. What am I doing? I'm saying very clearly and please, I don't mince my words. Suicide is Quran. What is problematic is when people try to judge the achira of a person who was died by suicide and we don't know the circumstances that led to them. In fact, we don't even know our own enemies, they'll protect us and preserve all of us to judge anybody else's. This is very important. So to say a statement like that's said here on the side here, they're going to hell for killing themselves is very problematic. Rather, what we can say is something like, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant their families so that our patients during this time. And to recuse ourselves from giving any judgment because only Allah is the judge and only Allah knows in those final moments what was happening for that purpose. This is very important. In our big training, we go through this, we go play, we discuss it, we kind of hash it out, we go up the case scenarios, we get very realistic case scenarios and we discuss this in much, much more detail. I'm giving you here for the snapshot of the discussion in that bigger training with hopes that, inshallah, you join us for that training. Now I know someone's going to ask, what about suicide amongst Muslims in specific? Well, first we have to clarify, are we talking about Muslims worldwide in Muslim majority countries? Or are we talking about Muslims in the West? I know many of you are joining from different places. I'm here in America, and my research is focused at the moment on American Muslims. And there is a difference. When you look at the literature across the world of the Muslim world, it is true. Death by suicide and suicide attempts spoke are lower amongst Muslims worldwide than they are amongst other people. So why was the research on American Muslims looking different? There was, in fact, and continues to show, unfortunately, an increase in suicide rates, particularly attempts, and attempts are different than deaths by suicide, increase in attempts. Now, the more attempts you have, the more likely you're going to get a death by suicide at some point. So those numbers may catch up to each other, but right now it is showing that attempts by suicide in American Muslims are higher. And we're going to talk about the theories as to why that is momentary. What we do know is that when we compare Muslims and non-Muslims together, we don't find that there is a difference in suicidal ideation, potentially thinking about it, or contemplating it, or saying maybe my life isn't worth living. This is a human issue. I firmly believe that there are many solutions from within indigenous to our own faith that we're able to actually benefit them. And I'll tell you now, the bigger research studies that I'm part of are very much looking at exactly this point, the moral character and resiliency that Islam offers Muslims. In order to help address some of these terrible numbers that we're seeing, we're leading to this sharp increase in suicide attempts amongst American Muslims. I also would like to share with you that there are multiple reasons as to why it could be that a person may feel suicidal. This is a very, very, very important. Please pay attention to the slide. Like any other mental health condition, there are multi-factual issues as to why a person could experience it. For some, it could be biological. It could be something that is genetic. They have a family history of chronic depression. Or it could be that it's a physical health condition. Or it could be something related to substance use. Or it could be psychological. Feeling of worthlessness or hopelessness or feeling like you don't belong, which is one of the main theories around suicide. Feeling a lack of belonging or feeling like a burden onto other people. It could also be social. Feeling like you are bullied or you have been bullied or feeling like you're rejected from your community. Or it could be related to religious discrimination and certainly we have a whole lot of that here in the US with American Muslims or Western Muslims. But it could also be spiritual. Feeling like you lack purpose in your life or feeling like you're beyond forgiveness and that's not ever the case. It's a problem that people sometimes reach that level of despair. Or if you notice, and this is a Venn diagram where you see overlapping circles and you see overlapping shades of colors, it could be a combination of biological and psychological or spiritual and social or a combination of three or four or all of these together. To try to boil down suicide to one reason or two and to say, oh, that person took their life because they were bullied would be absolutely incorrect. Because while bullying may have been one thing that happened to them, let's say, there are usually a multitude of other reasons that happen. Look, one of the best ways that I've heard early in my studies and research on this that I've heard suicide define that I have found makes a whole lot of sense to me and I'm gonna share it with you is that suicide is a permanent solution to what's typically a temporary problem. When a person cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel and they feel total despair, epilepsy in whether it's related to, again, a psychologically, a physical, a spiritual, social or a combination of some of these for all of them, a person may feel dismayed. So it is really important that we don't boil it down and say, oh yeah, that person over there it's because they had a terrible childhood. We don't know, it could be one of the factors. We're not necessarily easy enough to take a complex issue we can't boil it down to just one or two. This, the reason I also put this slide here is because I know we have many parents to many and many young people also to many and these two groups often feel misunderstood by each other and often people feel like they're being judged and being said, oh, it's because of this or that. Please know that it's actually pretty complex and until you sit with a trained professional it is actually pretty hard on your own to figure out what are the many aspects that probably go into this and which of them are solvable. While I can't change your genes I can definitely help treat the condition and I can also help address some of the root causes way lay down in therapy some of those root causes or perhaps intergenerational trauma. We can address those things in action or alleviate them to take away the suicidal thinking and tendencies and behaviors. This is why professional care is so important. The professional care that's hopefully grounded in spiritual aspects as well because using that whole big green circle around spiritual is really causes the whole thing to be lost. So more or not in the larger training. Now as we go on many of you have wanted to understand tell us about suicide prevention. Now we understood a little bit about the definitions we understood a little bit about the reasons why suicide happens. We've talked about the importance of language and the dos and don'ts. Talk to us about prevention. Oh here we go. Let's try to define suicide prevention. To first let's talk about our ways of doing so. There are two main ways. To create communities where mental health is recognized and valued. And Alhamdulillah between my own work here in the San Francisco Bay Area Muslim Community and Dr. Imman Majid's work in the Adam Center two different coasts in two different areas that brought Shalwa to communities that have truly tried to embrace mental health. And there are evidence of that community in which mental health is recognized and valued. And I hope that Shalwa Imman Majid will speak to us more about that when he shortly speaks in Shalwa. Number two, building a community capacity for responding to mental health problems before they become a crisis. Often as American Muslim communities, I speak to our own American Muslim communities, we are often very responsive. We get into a fight or flight kind of mode but we don't actually do a lot of preventative work ahead of time. And one thing we know about suicide is what works is upstream measures, which means prevention. What do you do with prevention? Whole lot of education. A whole lot of education. And this here about personal responsibility, knowing that no community is immune to mental health crisis. It is just because we are Muslim and have, inshallah, the perfect world view and religion that God has given us, it does not make us immune to fight, to suicide or crises like suicide. Why? Because not all of us are implementing in the full world view of how it's meant to be implemented. Secondly, we just talked about biological conditions, genetic conditions, social, environmental and spiritual issues that lead to this. So we can't just say because we're Muslim, we're not gonna deal with this. No, not only are we not dealing with it, but we're sticking our head in the sand and we keep seeing people, young and old, die by suicide. So what do we need to do? We should and must strive to make our communities healthier spaces, acknowledge our limitations, bring in professional care and health, make sure there's educational programings that are happening throughout the year. We really tried to push a campaign this month in suicide awareness and prevention month of September to have as many communities, many people getting hookah on the Friday hookah on the Monday. Give hookahs, and inshallah on the link here in our chat, we'll put for you the links to the suicide prevention hookahs. We have one for prevention and one for postvention, which is basically a word that talks about in the unfortunate aftermath of the suicide, how do you give a proper hookah related to that? We have the whole thing written out for you that is written from the Islamic proper perspective of how you give a hookah and all the proper scientific evidence can emerge together and it's free downloadable immediately right from the website. So please do click on that resource and take it and give it to your cultives, inshallah to state. The more educational programings the more trainings the better off we will be, inshallah. Now, I also want to share with you that there are areas and aspects here in which prevention plays a major role. On the community level, what does that look like? Workshops, lectures, where, schools, massages, workplaces and other community settings. There are so many places we have done these trainings or have been pulled into these trainings and that we want to go do these trainings, inshallah. Where else, relational, what do I mean by that? Topping into actual professional healthcare, mental healthcare is really important. Conflict resolution, parenting, interventions, peer-to-peer interventions, support group. And then those who have been believed are lost survivors to have them have support groups as well because it is so lonely and isolating and it is completely feeling like they're completely ostracized by your community for something you yourself didn't do but not only are you grieving or love them but you're also grieving a lost community after that happens to your own family or friends, certainly. And on the individual level, to recognize and accept that there are risk factors. If you are genetically predisposed with your family to mental health conditions, this is not your fault or someone else's fault in your family. This is the illness and tribulation that Allah has given you in your life, a trial and test. But he's also like he promised us through the Hadith of the Prophet, in the Mubarak Center, we could lead that in delet to every illness Allah has sent. He's also sent a treatment for another narration, a cure. So it is on us as individuals to seek out hope and treatment for whatever is happening in our life, any health conditions, including mental health. So we are not normalizing the topic of suicide. We are normalizing the seeking help so that it doesn't lead to suicide. What else contributes to all of this? Stigma is how do you define this word? It is the negative social attitude, disapproval or discrimination against anyone due to any one of their traits, ethnicity, mental illness, disability, and so on and so forth. In terms of mental health stigma, certainly our community has suffered from this as a bit. There are changes, and alhamdulillah. But when we refuse to host programming within our massaged or community centers or schools because it is taboo to talk about things like substance abuse or to talk about suicide, then we are just harming ourselves in our own next generation. Because these are human conditions. We're going to continue to suffer from them. So why not address it right heads on? So an example of this is when people say, and I've had this direct conversation at some of the organizations I've been part of as a community member. When people say, if we had an alcoholic sit-down and miss a dorm, what would people think of us? And I'm thinking to myself, do you know how many people in this community are dealing with that very problem? So we are putting our head in the sand and not dealing with the actual issue. Even though we have some wonderful, amazing medical advancements, but also spiritual aspects from within our own dean that can really help us with these issues. It could also be relational, shaming language that puts down individuals who are at risk. When someone says something like, well, be careful around Ahmed. He sees a shrink. So he must be crazy, right? This is very public. So kind of when we start to talk in this language and then we do that or make fun of things related to mental health, that person becomes not even just further ostracized, but then suicide becomes even more viable, right? As an option to be. And on the individual level, when you are ignoring the warning signs for yourself or your own loved ones. And I see this with parents all the time, all the time. It's not their fault. They're worried about their children, but they're also very worried about the human image for them and their children. And their children are literally in red flag, red zone, red flag, red zone. But because of all that stigma and shame, they're not able to take the next step. And then when the inevitable happens, there's a lot of, you know, even more guilt and upset and shame. So when people say things like, oh, I have to keep this to myself. I can't be weak and live on medication or therapy. These are self-defeating thoughts and it goes against everything our Sharia teaches us about asking the people of knowledge that you do not know, that I had directed in the end. And also the concept that Allah's upon us and it does send treatments for every illness, including anything related to mental illness as well. So as I wrap up here, as we talk about stigma and confronting stigma, there is definitely ways in which we do this. Please know that here in the United States, one in every five adults will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives. Truly the global pandemic of COVID-19, if it has taught us anything other than hoarding toilet paper, it is that we have all experienced mental health conditions or our loved ones right in front of our eyes. And we'll need to get over this. And I know many of you in this room are over this in Shawa because you're here. You came to a seminar called Suicide Prevention. But there are many out there including those in our own families who are not yet over this pump and we need to really help them in Shawa. Also understanding that when we talk about well-being, and this is not people talk about the being self-care is selfish, it's not. This is something we're most proud of and it tells us to be able to fill our own cup if you will so that we can pour out for others. But if you keep on pouring out without taking care of yourself, then you will run on it and eventually not be able to help yourself for it. So this kind of concept is also self-defeating. Also thinking about formally creating the spaces, actual spaces of healing and care within our centers. And I hope in Shawa you're here today a little bit more about that. And to understand and accept the challenges that come with this. Now, the last part of my presentation has to do with some very practical skills. Many of you are wanting to understand if I find somebody who is in fact having a difficulty with suicide, they're having thoughts about suicide and I'm holding whether it's my own friend, my own child, whether I'm a leader in the community, whether I'm the MSA president and therefore people pull me in, or whoever I may be. If I happen to be in a situation in a place of leadership or even within my own circles that a person is having a hard time, what can I do? So here are the next several slides are very much practical steps in Shawa. Number one, check in and keep checking in. Don't just check in once, keep on checking in. So here's an example. Hope, I haven't seen you in the community center for a while and I know your father passed away this time last year. We all have mercy on you. How are you doing in these past duties? That's so beautiful. That somebody would even remember that that person's father passed away a year ago and they're checking in because they know the anniversary is coming up and that's usually a difficult time when a person feels like, well, a year went by and I feel really, really alone. Check in and keep checking in. You consistently sound somebody at the prayer next to you and suddenly you haven't seen them for weeks. Check in, see what happened. Maybe they were just on vacation or maybe something actually is going on, right? That's the difference between community and not community. Establish privacy. Suicide because it is something that is difficult and mental health in general. The privacy is so important. We professionals are so careful about confidentiality. The biggest part of our training is literally on how to keep confidence and confidentiality. But in a community setting, this becomes a little more blurred lines. So if you are going to talk to somebody about this topic, take them away from the crowd. Talk to them in private. Delightfully ask others to step aside as you're trying to understand what's happening with them. Also, make sure that you know that there could be vulnerability that comes from this. So if a person starts to tear up or starts to break down, right? Where they share with you something very heavy, you need to kind of be aware that that may happen. And so you have some support that you need on when that happens. And also that you don't try to quiet them up. Often we find a lot of religious language of saying things like, I don't think I don't say that, how long? Don't know. Don't please don't do that to somebody who's going through suicidal thinking and issues. Instead say something like, well, that sounds like you're going through a really hard time. What has that been like for you? Can you tell me a little bit more? Just allow them, maybe they need to just sort of debrief a little bit, unload a little bit. And you are not the counselor, no? You're not the professional, you're not the therapist, but you're giving them some room because when they open up a little, then you can say, how about we connect you to professionals? And then actively listen. So if they say to you, I've been feeling pretty hopeless about the future. Ask them, what does that mean for you and your daily? And often the young people I say, they tell me my parents or the older people in my life, don't even try to ask, they just shut me up. Or if they ask, they're not really listening. Or they're like, get over that already. And that's not helpful in any way. Nor is the person going to get the help they need in that right item. So inshallah, I'm going to quote here our dear Imam Seraj Wahajid often would say, when we know better, we do better. So inshallah, when we know better, we will do better. InshaAllah. Now, there are three levels to suicidal ideation and thinking. And here are where I'm talking about the red flags. When we talk about low risk, intermediate risk, and high risk, how do I tell if I need to take them to the emergency room immediately or not? Here are your very practical steps. And again, this is a little snapshot from the much bigger training. So I hope you'll get the much bigger training and shout out some point. But here is some very basic level of what to do. At low risk, it basically is somebody who their severity, right? When you ask them what's happening to you, they say, well, sometimes I think of pulling myself across as my mind, but I just shake it off, right? Or somebody might say something like, I'm just tired of life. I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up. That is what we call passive. Passive thinking. They haven't taken any actual steps, no plans, no actual steps. So this is not a case where you need to take them to the emergency room, right? Rather, you figure out, do they have any good protective factors? What are their protective factors? Things like family. So someone says, oh, I would never do that. It would devastate my family. Okay, that was a protective fact. I hear people very often say, I would never do that. It's Haram, and I want my akhira to be something like that. That means their religion is a protective fact, okay? So what do you do for someone like at this level of low risk? They have some thoughts, but they're not acting on it. What do you do? You go through that suicide risk assessment, right? That we just talked about, which is this over here. These four steps that we talked about. So you go through this to figure out, where are they at? And then you discuss a safety plan. How do you plan to seek safety if it were serious? This is so key. And in our training, we actually teach people how to do a safety assessment and also know that all professionals, our mental health professionals, are trained on how to do a safety assessment. But it could be something like a list where a person says, if it starts to get really bad, I'll call so-and-so. And if they don't pick up and I'll call so-and-so. And if that doesn't work, then I'll go to the doctor. And if that doesn't work, I'll do this. Like it's a list, essentially. Almost like a tree, a triage, okay? So these are very important things. And if somebody is a little bit prone to thinking this way chronically, it's really important that you have that safety plan in place. What happens if someone is moderate-ness? What does that mean? It means that on the lower end, right? They're ambivalent to suicide and on the higher end, they're actually considering. So they're not too sure they wanna do this, but actually, if they get pushed into a corner, they will, like this kind of thing, right? So what happens for someone like this? It means it's really important to ask about if they have a plan. This is where there might be, I'd be by trigger warning in the beginning, I'll give it again. This is some difficult conversation we're going for. If a person says something like, if I were to commit suicide, probably jump off the bridge on my way home one day from work. Or they'd say something like, if things get harder for me, I'll probably end up doing this, or I'll jump in front of the train. Here in this area, I stand for it where I am, the Palo Alto city, which is where the university is located. It also has a school district. And in the last several years, there has been, unfortunately, a very high peak of deaths by suicide. This is pre-COVID all happening at the train tracks. And it's been very complicated and very difficult. And at one point, there were so many high school teenage deaths by suicide that the parents started to keep 24-hour watches watch, 24-hour watch at the train tracks. Subhan Allah, it was something very difficult. And part of the work that I got pulled into was actually really around that time. And one of the deaths of our own community members of a Muslim young person was actually part of that cohort of young people that died by suicide. It was very... And so when someone says that there is a plan, they have thought about it, and there is a possibility of reality that it could happen, now the red flags are starting to be raised, okay? Now there's something very important happening here. You can't just brush this aside. A safety plan is very important, but not enough. So what do you do? This is where you're going to have to help, you have to provide this person with a suicide crisis hotline, they need to have it. In fact, I hope you plug it right into your phone right now. And Subhan Allah used to be this long 1-800 number. That was... It's always free and it's always 24-7 available to you. But now the United States government has voted to now have a small three-digit number. It's very easy. Instead of calling 911, you call 988. You can put that in the chat please, inshallah. 988, what does 988 do? It takes you directly to the suicide crisis hotline that is 24-7, someone will pick up and talk to that person. And if they need to help them get to the next level of care, they will do so. This is very important and we will soon seem to use it as well, inshallah. Secondly, to make sure that if you are in a place of leadership or you have somebody in your family that's chronically going through this, that you get trained, take this training. Take the mental health first aid trainings. Take QPR, right? Take any sort of suicide response first, a gatekeeper training, first line responders training. And please, be well equipped, inshallah. I'm speaking now specifically to the leaders that are in the room. Also, make sure that they're willing, this person is willing to seek out services prior to an attempt, right? So if they have a mental health provider, it is so much easier to be able to connect them directly to that person. If they've already been seen somewhere, but if they have no established care, sometimes there's no other choice but to take them to the emergency room even in a moderate level care. Now, we're gonna get to high level in just a minute. But if you have no established care, please know, there is always a safe quiet place in every emergency room 24-7 where they have the ability to go get that person. Why am I saying that? If you're in the middle of the night or the day for that matter, and you have no point to take this person and it is above your head, which often it will be with suicide, please know there is always a safe quiet place in every emergency room. They will help. And they will not turn you away for lack of insurance when it's a suicidal crisis. Please, know this. Now, lastly, we have the highest level of care, which is emergence. This is when a person says that they have actually made the plans and they've even attempted to do self-injurious behaviors. And now they truly may actually die by suicide. There is nothing, there's no thinking here to do. This is an immediate straight to the emergency room. This is where you call here. It says 911, which you still may call for 988. And you go directly to the emergency room. It is really important for that person to remain safe. And if you think that I've had parents try to do this, they kind of stay awake 24 hours watching them. If a person is intent on suicide and they are not rational in that moment, despite your best efforts, they will still die by suicide. And I love protectors and protectors. But it's really important to understand the gravity of this issue. This is why professional care is so incumbent and important because it's beyond you. There is a whole system of care when this happens. I'll repeat what I said in the beginning. I've had families write to me and say, my daughter just said, or my son just said, X, Y, Z, and it's absolutely that they have a plan. The last one said something like, the last message I just received said something like, my daughter says, she will not make it to the end of the month. And they're asking me, is psychiatry something I should consider? I said, forget psychiatry, go to the emergency room. This is not a, you know, should I worry about medications? Let's not worry about her dying first. And then we're worried about the medications and stuff. Right, it's really important that we understand priorities, right? And so I know I'm getting very passionate about this, but we've just seen too many, too many deaths by suicide. And when we talk about it afterwards and we kind of go back and investigate and figure out what happened and so on, it is so hard for people to hear that suicide is almost always preventable. I don't mean to put any guilt on any more people. I'm just merely saying that as we go forward, insha'Allah, we can do so much to help people, insha'Allah. And it's like what Quran says, but Allah swt taught us that if you save even one life, it's as if you've saved all of humanity. So I hope insha'Allah we actually take these steps and give you enough. And that this kind of entice you, if you will, to take the full training of what to do to move forward. This is my last slide in Chalval. And it just talks about how to keep calm in a very difficult situation. Because if you get all frazzled, then imagine the person who's contemplating death by suicide right in your mind, right? And so please identify for them what is causing them to be comforted. So here's what happens. If in the moderate or emergent suicide crisis, but we just talked about the first, the free size I just covered. If you consider that a person has reached moderate or intermediate or advanced kind of level of suicidal thinking or abilities, then at this point you're calling 911 or 988 immediately taken to the emergency room. But let's say now you call that number and you're waiting for the ambulance to come or waiting for someone to come to take them to care. What do you do in the meantime? Well, of course you stay there and do not leave their side at all. But at the same time, ask them what comforts them. Somebody might say, put it on, comforts you. All right, simply put it on. Someone else might say, that is the last thing I wanna hear right now. But you know what will comfort me is you holding my hand. Okay, then do not. Whatever it may be, it's sort of like you're just making sure that that person could get to the kind of care they need immediately. Stay patient and calm to the best of your ability. Offer clear explanations because it could be that that person, whether it's due to mental illness at that moment or whether it's due just to their feeling completely besides themselves and overwhelmed, but they are not thinking rationally. So if you're trying to talk logic to them, it's not getting. And so you might give very clear cut responses to help them down to your state problem. Things like if they say, let's give the example of it says on the side, I just wanna hit my head against the wall. Okay, identify that feeling and say to them, I'm really sorry that you're feeling this frustrated. However, I can't let you hurt yourself, right? So we're going to help contain and calm down that person until we can get them to the hands of perfection, right? And so I hope, Insha'Allah, that this overview just to recap what we did together here, we've talked about from the beginning some definitions. We've talked about language and the do's and don'ts. We've talked about, we've said that there are resources in the articles, Insha'Allah, links have been in the chat for you. We've also talked about some prevention and upstream measures of what it means to make sure that our communities have education, cookbooks, seminars, trainings on this topic. We've also talked about intervention, what to do if someone is in a low chronic or intermediate or emergency situations. We've talked about the 980 number. We've talked about bridging that care and getting that kind of hope and then making sure that you actually take this very seriously, Insha'Allah, that's the piece. There's so much more to share my sisters and brothers and out of my time from for the presentation today, but I hope this has been a useful in a nutshell discussion on suicide prevention and intervention strategies. But where I hope Insha'Allah we go from here is as I mentioned much earlier in the presentation that we have this 500 Imams campaign and the full on training, but I hope Insha'Allah many of you will actually attend and take part in because that is where I really believe a lot of the extra or a lot of the in-depth understanding of suicide education and prevention is likely to happen. And what's very unique about this particular training is that not only do we bring the most evidence-based scientific measures and understanding from the research on the topic of suicide and mental health, but we bridge it and marry it to the Islamic understandings, our morals, our ethics, our understanding of this concept as well and kind of bring the two together. So Insha'Allah please do keep in tune. If you're anywhere near Dallas or New York in November, please come to the trainings Insha'Allah and if not then sometime in 2023 we hope to catch you in your own cities or in the virtual trainings. I hope this has been useful to you with Linda and we will, I'll conclude here Insha'Allah and we're excited to listen to and hear advice from Imam Majid who's done a wonderful job in his own community and I have to say one of the very first Imams and supporters if not the first perhaps that has been so such an advocate for mental health from day one probably the first Imam to show up to our Muslim mental health conferences and discussions from the day now. And so I'm really honored by his presence here today and I hope Insha'Allah you'll benefit from him as well. Barak allahu khilum. Wa salamu alayhi wa salamu alayhi wa salamu alayhi wa salam. In the name of Allah, Wa salamu alayhi wa salamu alayhi wa salam. First I would like to thank Dr. Rani Awad and her team for really being in one of the most important issues in our community, the topic of the time. In the last four months in this area, we lost four people to suicide and I know that how important this work, Dr. Rani Awad and her team in leading and creating awareness, training for Imams in protecting our community and saving life. Have been said already that whoever save one life they save all humanity and whoever take one life they take life all humanity. Therefore saving life is supposed to be the business of all of us and therefore I'm really grateful. Just this presentation that Dr. Rani has finished very enlightening and I think it will courage all of us to seek the full training. That's why insha'Allah we're inviting her and the team to our area, Washington area to train Imams and Khatibs in our area insha'Allah that will be part of our insha'Allah plan to do so. I just want to say that as an Imam I look to the decision of our community from three lenses. Number one is understanding in our community that mental health like physical health. Person might have stomach ache, which is a physical aspect. A person might have depressions, anxiety. All of this is the same. All the sickness, all of them are just from Allah SWT. For having people not to realize that mental health is part of all other kinds of sickness it is where people get frustrated and because they don't see a wound they don't see a physical illness they get frustrated sometimes with their children, with their loved one that why they're not getting better. And we have a problem in our community sometimes with misunderstanding depressions to be laziness. Person be lazy or lack of motivating or not doing what they're supposed to do and therefore we get frustrated with our children and we don't realize that there's a sign of depression for example. Many parents also attribute to mental illness to evil eye or magic or seher. And while they taking that route to address this seher and the magic and so forth and the evil eye the children continue to suffer and they don't see a professional person that will do some intervention in their life. And therefore the role of imams are extremely important and that's why I'm happy this program is also geared for training imams, 500 imams. I think we should support this program financially and supporting it by spreading the word of importance of it encouraging people especially imam to attend most training because the ideal is to have every imam in America and a chaplain, male and females being trained in suicide prevention. There'll be ideal and every youth director in every masjid. That will be the best things will happen to the community. Therefore I'm gonna give more work and Dr. Rani and her team and our community should sponsor this work and sponsor imams especially in the community they don't have enough resources we should help to bring this training to those community. Now the dimension I'm looking at is the role of the imam. Imams have to know the limitations that we are, you know, may have degree in Sharia some of you don't have any background in mental health or psychology but we have to know where are limitations what are the limitations that we have. And therefore we have to take training like this to learn how to be helpful to the members of our community who are suffering or struggling with the mental health. And then educate the community that mental health is a real thing, it's not have to have a stigma and not have it built to feel shame, seek and help. And I think the labeling in our community have prevented many family from seeking help especially I want to say be very openly that when it comes to female they have parents have told me the reason that we're not encouraging our daughter to go for counseling because we don't know if she's struggling with any mental health she would be able to get married or not. I think well-being of a person is a priority and having to take care of someone's health and mental health is a priority not how that person suffer thinking that if somebody come to know that the person have mental health history and they will not marry them because of that that person that means that person themselves they don't have enough understanding of mental health or how to deal with mental health issues and as I said before, mental health could be like any other sickness and could be managed as Dr. Rani might tell you that. Now, the other thing is that that we should not mislead people as imams. I do believe in the power of the Quran and the healing and I do believe that. But we have to know that even if a person come with a physical illness and they want to ask us to make dua for Shifa we make the dua for Shifa but we ask them to seek the Dawah, the healing, the doctor and that's the same thing applicable in mental health because delaying treatment by belonging someone suffering by telling them that is Duruqya only, don't go to the doctor because they might give you medication or you become addicted to medication and we read in the Sunnah that Rasulullah advised people to have a Talbina made of broccoli, broccoli and he said that reduce sadness. That shows that there's a physical remedy or medication aspect of it. Rasulullah recommended that and therefore nothing wrong with people having medication and addressing their mental health issues. Now, the other aspect of this is the role of the imam supporting family who have experienced tragedy in their family and they lost someone to suicide. What kind of support system we have? We have unfortunately imams who say will not lead the prayer, for example. Who said that? A person who, a sister Rani is saying we're not normalizing suicide but we're saying that you have to remember the person who have mental health that made them come to that point. Who knows, Allah, the pen is lifted on them. It is where a person knows right and wrong and their complete mental well-being. That is different from a person who is suffering from mental illness. What I wanted to make sure, as Dr. Rani said, to bring comfort to the family rather than make them suffer twice. They lost a loved one and here the imam passed in judgment on them and the community passed in judgment on them and then they feel isolated in their own community. Now, in Khutbah Al-Jum'ah, for example, when we address this issue, we have to be careful of the language that we use even as we speak about this issue, mental health issue. That's why I think this training is extremely important and I'm quite sure that Dr. Rani and other have developed talking points to the imam how to speak about this issue. The other thing is that is how to partner as imams with the mental health professionals in our community. Alhamdulillah, in Adam Center, we have 16 mental health professionals and we had a social worker, she established good relationships in Sassu, the relationship with the mental health and I worked closely with the mental health professionals and actually we meet now once a month, we discuss cases and we discuss, was that bringing names, completely confidential, we don't talk about human names and so forth, but we're talking about what other things in our community we see that we need to address and also we also talk about how the imams and mental health people can take care of themselves spiritually, how can we process what we see in the community and what kind of support system that we may need ourself in dealing with the mental health issues in our community. There's almost like mental health crisis now in this country, all of the, our council, our council, they have waiting list, all of them have waiting list and therefore this is really a very timely, I really cannot overemphasize how much I appreciate what Dr. Rania and her team are doing in this regard. The second dimension is the role of families and parenting classes and awareness, how to teach parents to see, maybe recognize some of the science of mental health and their family. First, Dr. Rania talked about the stigma. We need to address the stigma of importance of parents taking their children for mental health counseling and therapy. The second, that the anger sometimes parents have toward the child was mental health. We need to teach people compassion because maybe sometimes the anger the frustration, let me say that frustration of seeing the person that they can do better they can just, they need to get over it and we need to teach them that how they can deal with this issue because some of them also come from different culture background, they don't know what to do and therefore have empathy with them that we need to help those parents to navigate the difficult issues here and also the caretaker sometimes they themselves need counseling and they need support system because it could be very emotionally draining take care of some of the mental health issues. And the other things that Dr. Rania have touched on it that they're worried about if we take them to a doctor, they're going to give medication, they're going to addicted to medication and those kind of things and I tell them all the time at the Sadalia that for every disease is a cure inshaAllah and whatever it takes to cure that person inshaAllah, Allah SWT will bring goodness out of it and especially in your community when you have people that you trust in mental health providers please seek those people but you have to know that going to medical doctor dealing with physical issues and mental issues is the same of importance in our community. The last thing I want to talk about parenting is that we would like to have also support system community support system in certain situations where people have lost someone to suicide how can those people seek support system in our community grieving and having social support that make them go through this with dignity and compassion that we provide by the community. The last thing I want to say is the role of teachers and school system. Unfortunately we have even Quranic schools where they children got depressions suicide thoughts and so forth and there is no mental health people there or counselors and only left with the teacher the Quranic teachers and sheikh and so forth who don't understand what's going on and you know the parents also they may think that the solution is for those children to have more of this additional Quran, more vicar and sometimes create resentment with those children and I know that for sure by talking to different Imams and teachers around the United States what we need in our Islamic schools to have strong counseling system in addressing the issue of mental health the other thing is that we need to create like a safe space for discussion in the community especially with parents of mental health because my experience when we did that at the Adam Center many parents open up and come and seek help and they said either themselves or the children went through mental health issues and they were worried about you know being seen with counselor or they worried about the stigma and labeling in the community the other things I want to say that we have to talk about the impact of the internet in mental health and how important it is for parents to be involved in this and our community to be involved and our family you know concerned about the well-being and being connected to connect those family members rather than people living in virtual society and sometimes they might have been talking to people that are not helpful the issue of self-image is one of the biggest problem and this Instagram and so forth many young people go to depression because of competition of self-image and it is very interesting that Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said about a Sahab with him Zahir Zahir Zahir was not that handsome guy and many people were not you know not being his friends during the Rasul sallam time because he is not a good looking and you know and Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam used to joke with him all the time and when the Zahir was in the market Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam ran after him and he sat to help me He threatened himself they chased him Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and Rasul sallallahu elaihi wa sallam said you know He will be interested in this man he said Rasulallah known will be interested in me look at me Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and Allah he ran was so precious in the eyes of Allah. We need to make sure that we address the issue of self-esteem in our community and having our community to understand that words matters in talking to people. I'm not saying that somebody that was by suicide because somebody has just said one thing to them as Dr. Rani said there's many factors in this issue but I'm talking about a self-image in our community and we have we have something called religious police and I've heard of them they standing in our masjid judging every young person walking with that message how they look and so forth they check them and so forth and they turn them away from the masjid and we need to have created compassionate community that really welcoming people and show care toward people. I'm quite sure that maybe more for discussions on the top here but I don't go too long in addressing the issues I left some of the issues for discussion Hashan. I'm about to go off, Imam Majid I really appreciate it. I wonder if Mr. Sismed will be joining us in Shalwan we can do some Q&A with you. Thank you so much Dr. Raniya and Imam Majid on sharing your knowledge and your respective fields on this topic. We took away some really great points about suicide within the Islamic context the many factors that contribute to suicide and about combating stigma around suicidal illness. Additionally Dr. Raniya did an amazing job outlining how to conduct ourselves when speaking to someone with suicidal ideation or intent and about how to assess and address suicide risk and Imam Majid thank you so much for sharing your insight on the prevalence of suicide in the Muslim community from your perspective as an Imam and you also brought up some really amazing points on the limitations of Imams in providing mental health support and the importance of seeking the care of mental health professionals in conjunction and then some really amazing points on educating family members, parents, teachers and other community members to cultivate the skills to address the various issues surrounding suicide. So we will now be taking some questions from our attendees. So the first question we have is I think this one would be for Imam Majid is a person responsible in Islam if they suffer from a mental health issue and the end result is suicide versus someone who intentionally takes their lives. Sorry you're muted I think. In Islam any actor person does at a time they're not aware of right and wrong and they're not in complete mental capacity they are not responsible for it. They have to be in complete mental capacity and in decision making like Rufa Al Qalam can be lifted. I think to Sphere if it's okay to join this question with another one that's in the chat as well that has to do with very similar thing and it was I think something that I had said so I'll address it in Shalva because it was a statement that I had said related to suicide being param and what I'm referring to there very specifically is the ruling in Islam not specific people obviously but the ruling in the faith itself that says if a person intentionally takes their own life reverse their own self which results in death then this is prohibited and this is taken directly from Al-Qaeda and it says for us to not kill ourselves that's up to you right to not kill yourself and so and then the rules are attached to all of these things. Now what we clarify here is I hope is very clear for everyone who's attended this session from what I've presented from more scientific and from what Yvonne Majid presented from the religious aspects is that if the person is not in a rational state of being then we know that Allah SWT as Yvonne Majid just said the pen is lifted from them and so this is why we say to people do not judge because you do not know in those last moments where was the person's were they rational in that moment or not this is something that Allah only in that moment and so he will be the ultimate judge of this so we cannot just with one sweep say everyone is going to hello this is not what we mean by it rather we say only Allah is beloved to Allah. The ruling is clear for intentional and the rulings related to someone who is irrational is also clear so I hope that's you know a little more clarified with this session. Thank you so the next question someone's asking if it would be okay to share their experience with passive suicide within an educational setting with students to educate them on suicide and if there is any way I guess if there's like a like a correct way to go about that so either of you can take that. This is psychological issues. I think that there is certainly a benefit to sharing although I would caution and draw the questionnaire that while self-disclosure in many ways could be actually very therapeutic and helpful at the same time this topic is a very difficult and triggering topic so finding the right way in which doing so is going to be really important I don't know the ages that wasn't mentioned how old these are if they're very young and preschoolers and you know be very useful to a Sunday school setting but certainly if they are older. They actually mentioned that they're Sunday school students but there's no age. Yeah there's no age so we don't know exactly the details on whether or not that age is appropriate or the setting is appropriate however in the right context self-disclosure could be useful in the wrong context it could be very harmful so this is where some judgment is going to need to be taken into account and certainly some more training could be very useful too and I know I just want to say one thing Alhamdulillah I'm so glad for the person who loved that they themselves are able to overcome these chronic suicidal feelings I'm so happy to hear that Alhamdulillah we'll look for zero view and hope you and hope you help others in shape. I mean so another attendee is asking how do we identify suicidal thoughts in someone we know is depressed but they never explicitly say that they want to die. This too is a very difficult question Soprana and my heart really Soprana goes out to a person who has lost anyone who's lost somebody to suicide. I mean I lost Soprana a lot of really ease that burden for you Soprana and then give milk finna for goodness for you I love you. It's really hard when a person does not say the one thing that I can answer from your question if it could be useful along I hope for being any any use at all at this point is to say that if a person is depressed and the question here was chronically depressed then please know that there is for the others in the room to know that there is in fact a predisposition to somebody to consider suicide and act upon suicide with chronic depression. They do sometimes go hand in hand and so it's important that if that's the case to then ask preemptive have you thought and I know this is really hard for us to do for our loved ones people are like I don't want to put thoughts of suicide in someone's head it turns out that all of the research has proven that talking about suicide does not put the thought in someone's if they were already thinking it it could actually be a bridge for you to be able to help that person get the care they need when they open up and actually say and if they're not thinking it they'll say no I'm not thinking of this so asking preemptively especially for showing other signs of mental illness would be very important. Secondly is bridging them to care so if a person is dealing with chronic depression then we hope that y'all that they are getting the help and support they need from a professional who hopefully part of their professional assessment is to consistently ask about suicide in depression it is one of the main questions that we professionals will always ask about depression are you feeling suicide it is part of our every session that we have with a patient who is depressed we ask this question and so hopefully it'll be caught but if there is no connection again to professional care this may be missed and so I'm not talking about this one person who asked this specific case and we ask this person for all kinds we pray for them for all kinds of ease I know that the person is asking to get a general sense in general for others and I appreciate that the bravery it takes to say I've been through this and now I'm asking for others how do we help the others in the room so thank you for sharing your very difficult experience and asking on behalf of others of how they can help and this is how to help Michelle I hope this was a news. So this next question I think Ima imagine who might be able to answer someone asked do you believe depression and Iman are associated? No a person could be a very good believer and do tahadu at night and have depressions this is a myth anxiety attack for example anxiety attack although spiritual connection will help but it's not the cure and therefore a person can have chemical imbalance they can have other issues in their body and they have genetic issues therefore it's very important for us not to tell a person that you have depression because you're in many weeks you have problem with Allah you need to do more still fire and those kind of things. Imam Ali was Allah couldn't sleep at night have Arak and and come to Rasulullah Rasulullah gave him a dua to say you know you have someone like say the Miriam when she gave him birth to Issa alaihi salam said she doesn't have wiki man you know you know Musa alaihi salam have trauma you know uh when when asked him to go to pharaoh he said to Allah I'm worried about you hurting me talking to Allah SubhanAllah and Allah said the Rasulullah Rasulullah said about him to him that when he's Allah said that we know that if you're sad your chest become heavy because what they say about you and Allah they are not denying you they deny me it's cognitive like they focus from you to me and there's so many examples in the Quran you know of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala addressing the anxiety of a prophet and Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala said that we have sorrow you know it was important for us to to uh to uh a person can be emotionally devastated but uh have faith in spaces intact to be emotionally devastated can be very sad Yaqub alaihi salam cried until he had become blind does he have faith he has faith but she was grieving this time before having people to to say if a person is grieving somebody uh very sad of missing the love one they have lack of iman and lack for sabr and it's not true I hope that uh thank you so much oh sorry go ahead well I was gonna say now I should have covered it yeah and I do see that there's a few more questions kind of all um relating to maybe we'll just collapse them together uh because they're all relating to something very similar uh some ask about depression and iman the weakness of iman and faith meant to help other issues within and uh you know character or Islamic you know faith it's it's their faith week and so I think iman Majid did a wonderful job explaining that and you know one of the things that I shared actually in fact some of iman Majid and myself and others um from the Islamic leadership circle this company now have been working on a little video related to this 988 number um to you know let folks know that they're able to reach to me for our care um and one of the stories that I shared in that I don't know if it'll be in the video but I'll just share with you the story nevertheless because for me it really highlighted it so clearly I think what are the very first um faces related to suicide that I had uh you know that I first knew even about this even word of suicide I was studying my own doing studies in one of my own shoes like somebody who is a scholar of knowledge I don't know of sacred knowledge somebody who I mean is a as a Mufti is a prophet of the Quran somebody who is you know an ocean of knowledge whatever so so there's no questions about Islamic knowledge weakness of iman qualifications prayer I mean you don't get more versed than this subhanallah when I when I was a canola we don't you know all I'm trying to say is this was somebody who's who was teaching us this young right and yes subhanallah what we didn't know is that he was also suffering from mental illness we didn't know about the students and uh some witnessed him attempting suicide and it was very very difficult on all of us we didn't have the words we couldn't even explain what was that we should do such a shock to our system and then it became clear that there was actually mental illness and I'm so thankful that we're able to get hope and care and when people ask me the question about is this weakness of iman is depression just people being lazy is it just related to and I said it's kind of like here isn't your ocean of knowledge scholar but he has an actual bona fide medical and mental illness that is causing him and subhanallah later when we alhamdulillah he survived alhamdulillah he got the care and when you uh we talked with him later about this he had no rational recollection of what was happening because he wasn't in a rational state at the moment so when we talk about the most religious of people could it be in circumstances where they are not able to comprehend they've reached a point where it's not rational anymore subhanallah this is a very different thing where people say oh just get over or go pray more no folks that's not how this works right so it's really important to understand that and sometimes we have to tell these very difficult stories to illustrate that and so I hope that story helps and shall what it definitely opened my eyes completely completely to this topic and maybe understand a little bit better thank you dr ania and iman madjid i'm sure a lot of people are going to find comfort in both of your responses um so iman madjid there's actually someone in the chat that was saying that they're struggling with suicidal intent and they were wondering if you know anyone that they can speak to or if they can speak to you personally about their experience um or if they can reach out i just want to say that we're not mental health professionals because i just said that they want to know how they need to know their lane and i will really um if this person uh in virginia area uh we have mental health professionals we can direct them to adams center and they can contact adamscenter.org and iman madjid adamscenter.org we will help them inshallah if they are from different other communities i think that i don't know how we refer a system uh that you working with in in in this organization but i whatever i can do to help the person i can talk to them but i'm not a professional i can talk to them and help them from a spiritual perspective but i really advise them to seek professional help immediately thank you i don't know if i have any suggestions to them yeah i do want to make the point that it is actually a little bit hard not knowing where a person is located we're trying to give i see in the chat there's so many resources um being put in the chat box i really appreciate that folks and our madda stan team is putting in some resources and others also are putting resources one thing that i'll point you to in the direction of um for somebody who's looking for they don't know where to start uh to look for resources of course if it's a crisis situation we've talked about the 24 hour hotline and also earlier in the chat if you scroll up you'll see some muslim specific hotlines as well those are very useful actually they're actually it really we can repost them in the chat box now which are some of those hotlines in addition to that madda stan if you go to madda stan we'll put the link here madda stan.org backslash the resources if you're some people say i don't know where to look for in my location a muslim therapist i believe would like to have a person of my own background to talk to um this is of course not in a chronic not in a emergency situation kind of an everyday situation what do i do um if you go to our website actually we break it down we give you the different databases related to muslim mental health professionals in across the us and even there's a link to one that is international and so regardless of where you are you can type into the database to see what pops up in your location and then you can contact those we don't know all the muslim mental health professionals but we put it as a resource for you um for your state and your location to find people because maybe you don't know them all but we've tried to collect them um so they're on our website there so please use that link uh to your resources so i'll i'll pose this question to the both of you but someone's asking how do you convince someone to seek help uh when they refuse to and that matters like going to start first i'll start and show all these um if you can continue uh the first rule of therapy that we learn this is very hard people don't work to hear this but it's very important so one of the very first rules of therapy that we learn is that you can't help someone who does not want to do it i say this and people do not like hearing it and it's really important to understand why we say this in the professional field because it turns out that you can help convince the person you can help inspire the person you can maybe even get them to want to change but you can't force someone to change and that is really important so if you have done what you can you have like it's the summit concept of trying your camera you've done what you can you've given the resources you tried the people you've tried the talking you tried you tried and tried and tried and tried and the person is resolute against this please know that you and the eyes of the loss of kind of data you've done what you can if and when they are open and this is where it's because really important people get frustrated with especially their family and their loved ones or friends so then they say of course i'm not interested i'm gonna talk to them ever again you know keep the line of communication keep the help open because what if one day when because they know you're still willing to take to give them a hand when they reach out that they're willing to take that hit right so keep that line of communication open because one day if they say actually can can you help me right then you're able to actually take that step but it's really important to know that you can inspire change in someone else but you can't force someone to change i'll say one more thing often oops in the magic just one one one one more thought about that um if a person in the family loved one spouse child etc does not want to change you're trying to offer them the help they are they're not taking it you know who can take the help is you and sometimes the caretakers of those with mental illness or those with chronic conditions they need their own support to then be able to support the person who's going through it so they may be refusing therapy or help but guess what you can benefit a lot from therapy to learn how to cope with the person who is refusing so i really encourage you to do this for yourself which i'll and then maybe you'll inspire them to get back for it too when they see you've taken and broken that ice that you've taken the first step just i want to just add but if they're hurting themselves or hurting others you have to admit them to help you know because sometimes i saw one case where the person hurting themselves hurting others and so forth and they took it lightly when they they're calm they're calm and unfortunately that person have taken someone life as well therefore it's it's very important uh if a person hurting themselves or hurting others they have to be admitted don't do eduxalana am i correct now absolutely 100 percent um so ima imagine i think this question would be a good one for you someone is asking about um the procedure around the janaza prayer for someone that has committed suicide it's ten procedures of any janaza you know but one of the things that i tell imams what you say before you pray janaza there and comfort people or can turn people off they'll never come back to that message again it does a moment of make it or break it what we say before we pray janaza it's very important thank you so much for that um um so dr. renia there are a number of people here who have concerns around calling the 9 8 9 8 8 number and then having them forcefully or involuntarily um hospitalized people or hold them can you speak to that a little bit yeah sure in fact i don't have a whole lot of answers for you the 9 8 8 number has actually only rolled out in july of this year it's only been live for a couple of months now um the whole but i can't share with you the entire intention behind it i i don't speak for them i'm not part of their organization or great i don't i don't have any control over 9 8 8 the only reason i say that is because in the in the united states of america it is the only free 24 hour full seven days a week available line for you or your loved ones to be able to connect to care which is why we're saying this we hope one day there is a muslim based 24 7 uh you know 24 hour seven days of the muslim hotline there is not yet one in existence so in lieu of that please use this one now what i can tell you is the reason that they didn't keep it as 9 1 1 and they kept going to 9 8 8 one of the main reasons behind it is because they wanted to have mental health professionals and people who are trained in mental health uh working those lines or consulting with those lines so it's not going directly to police and law enforcement so that's a really important distinction between the 9 1 1 and 9 8 now if in what they call a welfare check let's say somebody called it is in crisis and they actually need someone to go get them from their house law enforcement may very well join them the differences and i know that they're trying really hard to do this is to train law enforcement or to have buddy them up with somebody who's a mental health professional to guide them through so they're not actually harming that person uh when they're in a psychotic limited state i can't speak for this all the time i cannot guarantee somewhat that this is going to be perfect every time but what i can tell you is it is very important that in a moment of crisis that a person has something to reach out to and i hope to have even better and more alternatives as we go through okay so the next question's asking aside from this session and the more comprehensive certified training is there any guidance around how to take this comprehensive information and the ideas presented here and make them a part of our everyday knowledge and language sure we can talk about that briefly inshallah and just say that yes i really thank you for that question it's a beautiful question how do i take this and actually do something with it inshallah one of the things that i mentioned in the slides earlier was the importance of community interventions workshops and trainings so even if so first step is hopefully you yourself attend the entire training and kind of get certified inshallah but then try to bring it to your community if it's not the full day training it could be a workshop it could be something just like this about a one hour two hour program that comes to your community or that you have the materials or the reporting and you've actually played that what we've reported here today to your community or you're able to just facilitate conversations even the context we said earlier about hujahs and khutnius right for jamal there's a jamal prayer and for me there could be one that's related to suicide prevention right that's really important when you start doing um aspects like that and kind of making it language that's even even that message is on among those leaders right i was telling our our dear leaders when you bring this to the nimbad you're actually talking about it we now are essentially saying i am a safe zone i am a person who's safe to talk to that if you're feeling this way i can help you or this message won't judge you let's hope this community center of the school won't judge let's help you right this becomes really important but if there's no indications there's nothing i walked by but over the summer i come to that visit of several different missing communities and i walked into a mystery every corner i walked into i was like who are these people every corner i walked into there was a poster that said you matter your mental health matters seek out help if you need it and i had never seen a miss semester community center that ever had such positive messaging around mental health i was so amazed i called the person in the hall and said who put these up where did this come from and they said it was the youth committee and i said oh it's a funnel the young people are on it it's a funnel but it felt so safe i don't know what to call it just so like like if a person was dealing with something they felt like okay i'm not going to be ostracized here somebody might actually help you here what a wonderful message to be able to give to our communities right so again when we know better we do better inshallah so i hope that i love that question i hope you do take some practical tips from here and then try to implement them in your community so um iman majid i think you can take this question someone is asking what happens if a figure within the muslim community becomes a trigger of suicide for them or suicidal thoughts it's talking about someone in the community cause people to uh to have that uh can uh thought thought because their presence create yeah um i i think um i've seen cases where people see their ex for example uh who when i was abusive even khutba jama'a and see the community celebrating them and so forth and that person have suffered a lot um and people ask they ask me what should we do first of all i think if somebody have caused some harm in the community that person should not be in leadership seriously because even if he's repented if we do good muslims become good muslims he's still his presence triggered this kind of issues that person should not be in especially given khutba jama'a that is one thing uh and definitely if a person have committed something called children like unfortunately we have a case now in fraiginia and become known because it wasn't in the news a person have done something molasi children in the quranica school was fired quietly then somebody uh recommended to message once we message and impacted teenagers those people who see this person in the community in any role they will have that triggers for the community to have responsibility to uh toward the survivor of those of those abuse they should not have that person in any leadership okay that's one thing second thing i will ask i will advise that person to protect themselves to seek protection themselves it have not been in the same as you know place where this person is or not listening to their lecture or the khutbas walk away but it even if you are a male let me just give you this fatwa because i asked my sheikh on it if you are a male jama'a is obligatory on you but you sat there and you hear someone who have hurt you or done something to you even the khutba jama'a and causing you to panic and have an anxiety walk away don't see the najma now you call of allah nafs and illa waza'a Allah does not help a person more than their capacity walk away from that jama'a therefore it's very important for us to seek to protect ourselves you know from the harm that done by those people but i do believe there's a responsibility to the community knowing that someone have done something wrong and i put them in leadership they should not have done that but the person should always seek how to protect themselves self-care first thank you so much for that imam majid um and then dr ania we had a couple of people asking about her contact us about marisan's trainings and how far along we are in the training for the 500 imams those are wonderful questions yes thank you for asking them um for those who've asked about how do you uh bring this training to your own communities and imam majid inshallah in 2023 will be the first on our list inshallah we're really excited to visit you inshallah and adam center in virginia but hopefully we'll also be able to do a few more trainings uh in 2023 live and then virtual the best way to get both of us is our email address which we'll put in the chat here it is outreach at maristan.org is the best way to reach out if you have a community that you want to bring this training to but remember it's not an individual thing it's a group effort so usually the communities we go to there are multiple different communities coming together to sponsor this training so therefore they have a portion of their community who are leaders um and again it doesn't have to just be imams but we do require that at least a third of the attendees are in fact imams people have asked why imams why why are you starting with imams of course this is our response is that our research consistently has shown in the muslim community that our religious leaders and imams are still and very much our first line responders they are the people that people tend to go to i didn't say everybody but i did say most of the community and so in that case it makes sense to start with those who when we train them they're going to affect so in addition to the imams we also in this uh cohort of trainees are also any leaders anybody who's on the front line youth leaders the staff that shape us people who are our our sunday school teachers Islamic school teachers youth directors msa leaders anybody who's at that front line of leadership within the community we want them trained in shell so if you're able in your community to bring these people together and to sponsor a training or to we can discuss other ways of hoping to sponsor we have sponsors like for example it can ever leave or if your community has sponsors who are willing to uh bring together to bring in the trainers finish all of them happy to be in touch outreach at maristand.org the other question about how far are we now in training at our 2022 goal of training 500 imams this campaign that we started out with a year ago and hampadina i'm very happy to tell you that we are almost there so we're very very excited so in shalom with the dalas and the new york trainings that are happening in uh november we hope and pray we're projecting that by the end of those trainings that will be have completed our 500 mission and hampadina and we have so many more to train after that but at least this first campaign has been successful inshallah and we hope to keep going from there with your duas and your support inshallah and the fulcrum of all supplies thank you so much dr rania and with that we will begin to wrap up thank you so much dr rania and especially thank you so much imam madjid for taking out you know your time this evening to help educate our community on the topic of suicide for those attending you can follow us on our social media channels to make sure that you don't miss out on our future events particularly if you're interested in the suicide response trainings happening in dalas and new york in november we also have a um one to two minute quick feedback form that you can fill out and it is on the screen now uh you can fill it out right after the session and it'll help improve our programming in the future inshallah also if you found this session to be beneficial to you you can consider donating your zakat or your sadaka funds to maristan to continue to serve our beautiful community and inshallah we will end our program oh sorry one more thing so if you are in california our clinic is now open if you want to book an appointment with one of our therapists at maristan you can scan um the qr code on your screen and book an appointment with us through there and inshallah we will end with a du'a from imam majid alhamdulillah rabbil alameen as-salaatu as-salamu ala sayyid al-mursaleen may Allah SWT bless this effort and all of the brothers and sisters that rani awad and people in maristan and everybody who's making this possible for training the imam and leaders may Allah SWT protect our community heal all those who are suffering from mental illness and may Allah SWT give them speed recovery and healing may Allah SWT protect the loved one and the providers and give them the strength and the guidance to be able to help our community and may Allah SWT assist his blessing and forgiveness for those who are suffering and who's lost to suicide may Allah SWT make this our gathering the gathering of blessing the company of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam peace be upon you alaykum as-salam wa rahmatullah alaykum maraq Allah thank you marja thank you so much for being here so thank you everybody as well take good care and good night we'll see you soon inshallah continue to follow us at maristan and we hope inshallah to see you in many more occasions and please keep us in your du'a's as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah alaykum