 Welcome back, dear viewers. Hope you've had a time for a quick cup of tea and sitting settled, so we've just come back from the daily doors. Hamdolah, lovely session. Always a pleasure with the brother Ibrahim al-Ansari. So now I'm going to welcome our onto our specialist continuing our conversations about various topics relating to mental health, stress and everyday mingles here and there that we all face. And to talk to us is brother Bilal Ali. Welcome. How are you doing today? Good. So we are going to go into mental health, which is a vast topic and a passion of mine, deeply passionate about this topic indeed. And you know, I think a lot of our experiences, if we're not passionate or we don't have that in our line of work, it's not enough. Unless it touches us in a capacity that, you know, someone we know, we don't really know much about mental health, except that, oh, that person has a condition. But how we deal with it, the stigmas we hold around it because of our ignorance, and that's what I'm hoping that we can, through our conversation, we can, you know, you can enlighten me and show other viewers as well about how we can be more supportive. And obviously we could go through anything ourselves in our own lives. So in terms of your experiences, when you're talking to people, perhaps in our community, outside, what kind of things do you face that, you know, kind of, you know, the kind of conditions that you deal with? It comes to mental health. Condition, I'd say conditioning, the biggest issue that I face is people's attitudes towards mental health, more than just, you know, I meet people who are experiencing depression. And sometimes people have anxiety disorders, you know, a variety of cycle, emotional, cognitive, you know, challenges that they have that we would classify as mental health. But there is such a stigma, such a negative attitude in large portions of the Muslim community, regarding mental health, that is to me the biggest challenge. There's been some real progress I've observed over the last, say, 10 years, a real shift that's taking place in different sections in the Muslim community, to the point where, you know, in the past there were some communities when somebody was unwell, they would take the person to the Imam when the person had a mental health problem. And instead of that person being referred on to professionals, they may be, you know, trying to choke the gin out the person. You know, some bizarre superstitious type of applications to try and address this, but now you have, you know, Imams, various clerics who have, you know, they tend to be the first port of call, but they now have a, there's a now more of an attitude to refer people on to specialists. And in one particular part of East London, you actually have two Muslim organisations who practice Rukia and other type, you know, particular method of faith healing. And that is oftentimes in a concert with a person's mental health treatment. So the person might be getting long-term psychotherapy, they may be getting short-term counselling, they may be receiving medication. But the Rukia practitioner will be encouraging that person, you know, make sure you're taking medication and I'll see you next week. We're going to do another session of Rukia, you know, whatever it is, but so they're working together because the site, I mean, and then because of what they're recognising in mainstream mental health in this country is that a person's spiritual calling, a person's spiritual inclination is a support mechanism. And it doesn't have, it's not, it doesn't have this attitude of, well, that's, you know, superstition or that's just religious stuff. Well, it's a hindrance to that. Yeah, it's a hindrance. Now we're seeing as, OK, this can be an asset in, because of treating a person holistically. So I think that's really progressive that in that particular section of East London that you have, you know, mental health practitioners working side by side with people who heal in a faith-based method. What kind of sort of mental health conditions do you see? Like, for instance, someone who has absolutely no idea what kind of, you know, you mentioned depression, you mentioned, you know, these are all terms of people. What would you say would be more serious of things that just can happen to anybody really anytime in their life? So there's some conditions where we would say that they would, it would be, I use the term more like to do with psychosocial because it could be like depression, for example, maybe more related to, a person's life experiences and how they've attempted to or failed to address those issues in terms of life issues. And they're just basically built up and they've just, at one point, they can't cope. Yeah, yeah, they get to a point where there's either, you know, like an epiphany that, you know, this is gone too far or it's just something that happens, you know, slowly or a period of time, you know, a person recognises them. So it's been a while now but I don't think I'm okay. Sometimes people come to me as a therapist and they're not quite sure what the issue is. Right. And what takes place in the assessment is for me to help them to kind of understand what's going on. But then there's other people who they know what the problem is and they're specific. And in terms of identifying what they want to work on, what they want to address, it's crystal clear. It's absolutely crystal clear. And both are fine, both are fine. Sometimes we know something's wrong, but we're not sure what it is, but we just know something isn't right. So if someone came and they weren't aware, they were hearing voices or they were, you know, something wasn't right with them and said, I just don't feel myself and would you be able to sort of, what would your steps be? Would you diagnose them? Would you say, okay, you need to go to someone that's sort of more clinical general practitioner or would you say, would you help them in that, in the symptoms that they're describing to you? It depends on what the symptoms is that they, what they portray. And what I mean by that is that's why in terms of working as a, in private practice, there's a whole screening process. And one of the things that you explore for are, you know, are you on medication? Anything that would affect your mood, anything that would impact your mood? Or have you got a history of mental health in terms of have you had a diagnosis for a particular disorder, a particular issue? Have you had counselling or talking therapy or psychological intervention in the parcel? Have you had issues? Do you have issues with substance misuse, any addictions, things of this nature? There's a series of questions in terms of the screening process. And then that would inform me as a practitioner in what direction this needs to go. Or it depends on where the person was referred because sometimes I receive referrals where that has taken place already by a third party and they refer it to myself. So you have a young, hypothetically, you have a young Muslim boy coming to you, late teens, early twenties, and says, you know, my family say that I need to pray more, but I'm just not feeling myself, I'm hearing voices. I just don't feel like I haven't got the mood to get up in the morning to do anything. I don't feel like praying, but my parents just say I need to snap out of it and get on with it because my faith is deep. When you mention something like hearing voices, that is one of the symptoms of psychosis. Psychosis is a particular mental health order that can be quite serious and the impact of a person's life, if it's not treated early, can be very detrimental. In my opinion, or my view, it's almost as if a person's hearing has a psychotic episode and it's not treated and they continue to have these various psychotic episodes. It can almost become interwoven into their personality until it becomes like full-blown schizophrenia. One of the things that is taking place in mainstream mental health, though, is a move away from, for example, labelling. So it's sort of labelling somebody as a skitsoid or a schizophrenic. It tends to say that person has had an episode, a psychotic episode where they are hallucinating and stuff like that. It can be stressed in Jews, it can be genetic factors, it can be a number of factors which cause or trigger that. The interesting thing about it is as much as that can be, for somebody to hear in voices and have an episode, as much as that can be so unnerving, it can be discombobulating and disturbing, but there is real help. If intervention takes place early on, people go on to live regular functional lives. Sometimes people have periods where this is a type of thing that happens to them, but there is support mechanism in place that they can still live functional lives. It doesn't have to define their lives. That's what I think is part of this move away from labelling people because it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can't do this because I'm a skitsoid or I can't do that or I'm like as opposed to, or people labelling them and speaking down or being pejorative. I guess that comes down to, you're talking about practitioners that are moving away, but when that trickles down into society it does take time, doesn't it? For instance, the question I asked was how do parents, if they're making their children or somebody's coming and saying, well actually I feel like maybe my faith is because I lack faith, how would you as a practitioner say? I think that's too simplistic. Everybody has mental health, everybody has mental health. I can't emphasise that enough and I really want to get that across. Everybody has mental health. Mental health isn't, how can I put it? It isn't a, or isn't it, it's a case of, it's on a continuum. So sometimes we experience good mental health, different events happen in our life physically, emotionally, whatever the case may be, and sometimes we experience poor mental health. For example, our stress levels are increased, we may be experiencing anxiety. Some people have a mental health condition where it's something of a more life impact in nature and it takes more specialist intervention, psychiatric help to support that person or it takes psychological help to help to deal with the emotional fallout of that. Help is available, but we're all on that continuum and different times in our lives our mental health may be in the decline. We experience poor mental health, somebody's living a comfortable life, they've got a settled family, they have a good job, or they're an entrepreneur, whatever, experiencing highs and then the market crashes or they lose somebody, an unforeseen bereavement, not just where somebody's ill for a period of time and they decline, but out of the blue these things happen. Wouldn't it be natural for that person's mental health to change and to go into a decline? Depending on what support mechanisms they have or how they cope with those with that challenge would determine if they'd further decline or if they'd come back to their kind of fluctuate between their norm on the continuum. Do you think specifically for Muslims we can show more compassion towards people that perhaps our attitudes need to change or is it something that you think we are opening up as a community because obviously you work on a wider spectrum as well in terms of what's specific to us in our community. Do you think that we could do more as a community? There is, we could do more, but I've spoken panels in Marlborough's about addictions and the right mental health issues and I know that there is a Shia Muslim mental health organisation, NMG, which does some really serious work behind the scenes working abroad in terms of training in the Middle East, offering training and supporting organisations and professionals abroad and running workshops in the community. It tends to be professional practitioners that support each other but then they take that into their pockets of communities, that learning and sharing those insights where there's a wealth, there's consultants, top psychiatries really without name dropping, but there's really some really movers and shakers in the mental health field that are a part of this gossip body. There has been a shift, there has been a shift, but we want it to trickle down more, we want it to become more common that it's a part of our everyday life. Mental health is a part of what it's meant. Because I was speaking to Shia recently and somebody that leads a centre and he said, you know, we have people coming and denying, perhaps the family member is known to be unwell, but they don't deny it because they don't want the stigma that is attached to their child and they've got to think about their future, their marriage and things like that. And then he was saying that we need organisations to come into our centres to educate people that isn't just their child, it's a community's child and it's not just their child, it's happened to, but it could happen to anybody. So in terms of the organisations you're saying, perhaps there's sort of more work that perhaps people could be inviting them, they could reach out and actually educate people that it's not, like you said, we've all got mental health, we don't know when and where it could actually... We don't know where, in what direction it will move, but it is a shame that the stigma exists, but we're working through culture if you could put it that way and what people's ingrained reactions are. Excuse me, change attitudes and let people understand that somebody can have a mental health issue and they may receive help and then they can move forward in their lives. I know that it's kind of a controversial issue because it can affect people's marriage or potential of getting a marriage, for example, because they were known to have it or that family is known to have somebody with mental health and we do need to move away from things of that nature. It doesn't help anybody and it leads to people even feeling ashamed to come forward and seek help, so then you have people in denial trying to hide, seeing the signs and symptoms in themselves but thinking about what's the consequences in the community, so let me try and hide and fudge it. Oftentimes things get worse before they get better because they don't seek their help. It's a judgment, isn't it? For instance, if somebody has a diagnosed condition, say they have bipolar or medication and they have an acute phase, then they could be different to what their usual self would be and if someone doesn't know that they're not well and suddenly this person behaves in an erratic way, that judgment is going to be there, that person is bizarre because they don't understand because obviously there's no diagnosis and so immediately that person is going to be treated differently, judged, which is not nice and then if we were more open we'd be perhaps more understanding that this person at this point needs support. I mean, how would you sort of, as a last comment, how are we going to improve things in our community? I think we have to remember our religion, remember our religion to say, if you've got depression or you're going through mental health problems you've got poor faith, but more to be reminded that Islam is a religion of rahma, a religion of mercy where there is no rahma, there is no Islam, so we need to be merciful to one another and compassionate. This is the sun now, this is what we know about. That's our religion, not judgmental and pushing people out but being accepting or understanding or kind to people. That's a lovely point to finish on. So really to the viewers, if we suspect somebody's not quite well, to show that rahma to extend compassion and do less of the judging and just think that we are, if that child is of the community it's everyone's child and they used to say that the whole village would raise a child. It takes the religion to raise a child. Even though we've not in those villages back home our community is here. It's in the wider context. It's like we're just communities. It's a human nature to reach out and be compassionate. So thank you so much. It's a vast topic as we said. We just tried to touch the basics and say, well how can we make those changes in our own life perhaps the people we know and support them. So inshallah, you have a blessed day ahead of you. And inshallah, we'll see you another morning. I hope you've enjoyed that session and now we are going to head off to Fahima and Sena and I'm looking forward to seeing what they're cooked because I would like some as well.