 Have you ever felt low, not in the mood for anything, possibly not wanting to talk to anyone, even losing weight or gaining weight? These could be signs and symptoms of depression and you wouldn't even know. Brothers and sisters, Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Welcome back to another episode of Real Talk with the Muslim Councilor. I'm your host, Rana Hamid, and today we'll continue our discussion with mental health problems discussing more about depression. Assalamu alaikum, Sister Barab. Assalamu alaikum. I want to start off and ask, what is depression? Well, that's a very good question again. What can be depression? From a clinical point of view, there's a specific definition and timeframe for somebody who could be dealing with an excessive amount of sadness, perhaps loneliness, overeating, under-eating, over-sleeping, under-sleeping, not taking care of their hygiene, feeling very lethargic, low energy, not engaging in their work with their family and friends or in school, not doing well in school. So these could be a lot of the symptoms of depression that people could experience. And so when it comes down to the clinical definition, it has to do with time frames of how long somebody could be dealing with this type of sadness. So, you know, sadness could be related to grief, it could be related to a loss of a relationship, losing a job, somebody dying, you know, not doing well in school, loss of a friend. So loss of anything. Sometimes with depression, it could be something that's innately in our genes. So it's not necessarily just a situation that could cause sadness in somebody, but it's something that we could inherently have in our genetics, just like other illnesses. Now you say the time frame. So could there be, I can have the symptoms of depression, but for a really short time, would that still be considered depression or just... Not clinically, not clinically. So, I mean, we all experience some sort of sadness. I mean, you know, sometimes somebody could break a nail, they're like, oh, I feel sad that I broke a nail. It could be something silly like that. Or, you know, you lose something, an item that's precious to you. You will feel an emotion of sadness, the opposite of happiness. So whatever that would feel of joy, elation, it would be the low mood and energy of that. So you would feel that sadness. And sometimes people could be experiencing sadness, but then they'd say, I'm so depressed. Right? And that's a clinical term that you would use. And so sometimes the loss of the meaning, the emotion is lost in just using words instead of labeling correctly. Now, you know, somebody could be experiencing a lot of what we were discussing, but they wouldn't even know, like you said, that they're actually experiencing depression. This shows up, let's say, with students who are not doing well in school. They're failing classes, they're not attending classes, they're not hanging out with their friends. And so they would come and see us and then, you know, they would describe their symptoms and say, well, you possibly could be dealing with depression. In that case, you know, we'll explore it further to get a diagnosis and then look at possible treatment. Okay. I had a friend of mine who would, she went through struggles in her life and she would constantly, the way we saw it was she would run away from her problems through sleeping. Right. Now, what could she have possibly done to, say, kind of overcome this type of depression? Or is it depression? So you said that she was running away by sleeping a lot. Yeah. That's a common symptom. People who are oversleeping, they would run away from their problems, ignoring their problems. The best escape is through sleep, absolutely. You know, 12, 14 hours a day, people could be sleeping or engaging in video games or some type of form of addictive replacement. Or it could be the other end of it, where they're not sleeping, they're dealing with insomnia, and that's a very common thing as well. So when you are overwhelmed with life struggles and you're not coping with the challenges properly, oversleeping is definitely some kind of symptom of depression. In her case, I guess friends and family as a start would have done something or approached her, some kind of intervention. I mean, they tried, but she would always, you know, kind of like stay away. She didn't care what, you know, people spoke to her, told her, even though, you know, they tried to motivate her and stuff, but it was kind of like she always kept her struggles in front of her and kind of reminded herself that she was going through these struggles. That in itself is a coping strategy, recognizing that you are going through a problem. When you're dealing with depression or any other mental illness, just being aware that you're actually dealing with a problem, that is the beginning of the first step of getting the proper help. So it's interesting to say that although she was oversleeping and, you know, avoiding her problems through sleep, you're telling me she also recognized the problem was there. So that in itself, that awareness, because a lot of people who are, let's say, dealing with mental illness, such as depression, sometimes they're not even aware. And so they're in denial. Yet, your friend was aware that there was a challenge there right in front of her. So let's go further with this. What else happened with that? So she was aware that there was a struggle, yet she was still oversleeping. Yeah, because she knew that she had this struggle and her way of getting away from it was to just sleep and like block out everyone else and everything else. Not an easy thing. How does she eventually work through it? She really didn't. I mean, she's still facing, yeah, she's still oversleeping. She feels that this is the best option for her. You sleep away your struggles. We know that's not the best way to deal with it. So in a case like that, what we'd recommend is with gentle pushing, gentle support, and from the family and friends, get her to go see a doctor as a first step or perhaps talk to somebody that she could trust to talk about the problem. Somebody who's aware that there is a problem, like I said, that's the first step in getting the proper help and support because perhaps she could talk about it with somebody that she could trust. See that there is a solution to the struggles that she's encountering. Sometimes going through the struggle in itself and being aware that you're going through it can get you through it. Right? So with depression, we're taking a look at, all right, so instead of sleeping all the time, set an alarm to get only seven to eight hours instead of 12 to 15 hours a day. So setting an alarm. And it's baby steps. Again, we use the analogy of somebody who breaks their leg. It's hard for them to right away start running a race if you have a broken leg. That needs healing. So with depression, the same thing, baby steps. Start off with, all right, let's work on your sleep a little bit because chances are somebody who's dealing with depression, their sleep is off as you can tell with this case. Their eating is off. They probably don't have the proper energy or they're overeating which causes them to sleep so much or under eating no energy, hence they want to sleep. And no exercise. So we would work on these three things to create some kind of balance to begin with. So let's work on the sleep, seven to eight hours. Let's work on having proper food. Start off with breakfast, snacks, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. And I'm talking about healthy whole foods. So not processed foods, no caffeine, no pop, no junk food. That causes more intense emotions, right? And of course exercise. The natural best way of healing any kind of negative emotion when you're not dealing, of course, with severe illnesses is exercise. It's your natural antidepressant. It's your natural anti-anxiety because what happens when you are stressed and dealing with illnesses where there are stress hormones and other hormones related to depression coursing around in your system, there's no outlet for them. So when you exercise, what happens when you exercise? Your heart is pumping. Your heart is racing. Your blood is flowing where it needs to go. Adrenaline is released in dolphins into your system and the cortisol and stress hormones are out of your system. Now someone who has depression, how many times a day should they or how long should they exercise? I mean, like we were saying, baby steps to begin with. Let's start off with taking a walk every day for five to ten minutes. Going out, getting some fresh air outside, two hours worth of it gives you, or rather ten minutes, walk gives you two hours worth of focus energy, which is great for students, right? You need that. So starting off baby steps. Two, three times a week, that ten minutes make it twenty minutes. Perhaps at this point with a boost of energy, they can go to the gym, they could swim or do other forms of exercise that gets the heart going. The more you do this, the more you fall into a routine and this is what's important with depression. Some people will have depression, just like they will have diabetes. It will be something they will live with. So what does that mean? It means you have to work on your lifestyle. Again, when we talk about lifestyle change, it means eating well, sleeping well, and exercise. And I always stress upon these things, no pun there. But I always focus on these three things when you're dealing with any kind of mental illness. It is eating well, sleeping well, and exercise. This is your base balance. Now, the next level to that, of course, is when we talk about it from a spiritual point of view, which we'll discuss a little bit further. Respective viewers, please stay tuned after this break to talk more about depression. Welcome back, respective viewers. We'll continue our discussion on depression. Now, sister, can you give us some of the cases that you've seen on depression? There's quite a few. Over 10 years now. I mean, the range of cases that I've seen with students have to do with feeling overwhelmed with school work, family obligations, work, and trying to maintain good grades. I mean, you're a student yourself. You can see the challenges. And so sometimes that can be overwhelming when you're working so hard to do well in school and you don't do well in school. So what does that happen? It affects your mood. It affects your energy. And all of a sudden, I've seen students who don't feel like going to class. They're not studying. They'd rather go engage partying or video games or smoking at Gila and things like that, wasting time rather than being productive. And so they come at the end of the term when they have to drop classes and they're feeling overwhelmed. They're wasting their parents' money. They feel guilty and they're feeling very low. So you have cases like that. And these are cases that we can easily work on, like academic supports. All right, drop this class. Let's talk to this professor. Let's work on your study skills habit. Let's focus on that. These are light cases, you could say. The more severe cases have to do with people who have feelings leading to thoughts of suicide, of wanting to end their lives, or thoughts about not wanting to live. So they may not actively want to take their lives, but they don't want to live. We're going to be exploring this topic, obviously, later on a little bit further. But just for the sake of cases that I worked on, we could be to that degree. So from light depression because of situations in life to actual severe thoughts of depression, things like that. Common as well are, let's say, students who are coming in from international countries, different countries, the international students, where let's say there's natural disasters back home, there are wars happening, political situations, things like that will, of course, affect your mind and your spirit. These situations can trigger symptoms of sadness, feeling out of control. You have no sense of control over the situation and hopelessness as well. That can also trigger these emotions. Now, something like school and classes. I mean, most people wouldn't consider that depression, but rather, like you said, it's overwhelming because the situation is a little bit hard. Now, how, why, what can, that's okay. See, that's part of the challenge of students sometimes is that you don't know you're actually dealing with something like that. You don't know that you're dealing with something that could lead to depression. So here's the thing. All right, you're feeling overwhelmed. There's so much going on. And the question is, what do I do with this? This is the point right there. You don't have control over these situations. You don't. You don't have control over the deadline of an assignment. You don't have control of the questions you're getting on the test. You don't have control over, let's say, you know, family neighbors or whatever, they're causing you more stress. If you don't take care of how you're feeling in that moment, it could lead to depression or symptoms of depression. Do you understand that? So if we don't take care of the stress of feeling overwhelmed with situations, that could eventually lead to depression. So when I have a student comes in and is feeling incredibly overwhelmed with everything, we don't have control. Again, we talk about that. You don't have control over these situations, but you have control over how you choose to respond to these situations, right? Yeah. You have control over how you choose to respond. You can freak out. You know, you can become very upset. You can ignore everything and sleep like your friend. Or you could say, you know what? I don't have control over this. I don't have control over the weather. I don't have control over the deadline. I don't have control over ABC. But you know what? I have control over... You know what? I'm going to work with my professor to get an extension, per se. There's progress. There's a little bit of movement in changing the deadlock situation. So if people don't take care of their stress, it will eventually lead to illnesses. Now, we talked earlier about people inherently genetically nurture versus nature type of thing, where you have a family history of depression just like, say, diabetes or cardiovascular diseases, right? Yeah. So a situation could trigger symptoms of depression. Your whole life, you're fine. All of a sudden, you know, a friend of yours doesn't want to be your friend anymore. Or you have... You're engaged and then the engagement breaks off and you feel so sad and overwhelmed. Yeah. I have lots of young men and women who come into my office like that. They can't focus on their schoolwork anymore because their fiance or their wife or whatever, you know, it's over. Of course that's going to cause feelings of that. Why is it that some people, though, it takes them longer than others? Yeah. Some could be they're genetically wired. They have the symptoms of depression or rather, sorry, the genes for it. And so this situation triggered. Triggered. It came out. Yeah. So how do you cope with that? Well, when we talk about treatment, first step as always, I encourage people, go see your family doctor. Go see a doctor. The doctor has the ability to diagnose and see if you are actually dealing with depression. Now, doctors can do treatment or they'll just give you a pill. And this is something in our communities we're afraid of and always taboo. Talk to them about this as well. Yeah. There's always these reliance or sort of dependency on medication. So, not necessarily. Get the diagnosis. See what's happening. If it is depression, then ask for a referral to see a specialist. So a counselor, a psychologist, you know, or a person who has the ability to do the actual therapy, not just popping pills as we say. Yeah. So with that therapy, talk therapy. So you go see somebody like me where we'll explore what are the situations around you that are causing you to feel this way. Right? And so with that, just talking to somebody, sometimes you alleviate, you get rid of the stress. I find a lot of people tell me, you know, I can't talk to my family. They're going to judge me and my friends. They're going to say, toughen up. You're a guy. Yeah. A lot of people face that. Exactly. Where if you go talk to somebody who is not somebody you know, like a third-party objective view, you'll be able to talk about these things. As we say, you know, just opening up your chest, just getting rid of lifting the burden. Yeah. So when you lift that burden, sometimes you just feel a little bit better. You know? That in itself, the process working through a challenge, talking about it step by step, can be very healing. Yeah. And a lot of people don't understand that counseling in itself is a safe place for you to go talk to somebody who's not going to judge you. Of course. Who's there to listen to you and there to support you, even if they have different views. And so in this neutral environment, you get the opportunity to have somebody listen to you. And sometimes that's all it takes. It's just to open up and have someone. Yeah. A shoulder to carry on. Exactly. Exactly. That in itself can be healing. Okay. So again, there are options around what therapy is about. Of course. Right away people are afraid, especially in our community, especially in our tight mentality, in our community, the tight mentality of, you know, you keep things quiet, you keep things in, you don't talk about your problems. God will help you resolve these problems. God will also send you people, you know, in the universe to help you work through that. And that in itself is part of our faith, right? And we have that. I mean, we experience sadness. And the Prophet himself, you know, has expressed sadness in terms of what he knew what was going to happen to his household later on in life. That expression of grief and sadness is encouraged as a form of catharsis, of showing of love. And a lot of people misunderstand that as well. You know, in some schools of thought, think, you know, you don't, you know, a lot to grieve. You don't show sadness. You toughen up. Griefing is only for muharram and the majalas that, that's what our community, most communities, you know, they tell us, we don't cry. We only cry. Only cry, exactly. But the majalas in itself, and I did actually a lecture on that a while back in the beginning of muharram, where when we talk about the majalas and look at the benefits of the majalas and the barakah and the blessings, we know that's there. Let's look at it from a psychological point of view. When a tear comes down in itself, by itself, there's a release of toxins in there, which is when you cry, you feel good. Yeah. So imagine in the majalas, we say that the tear for Abba Abdullah and Ahlul Bayt, there's blessings in it that comes down anyways. Combine that with the psychological perspective of feeling good when that tear comes down. That together in itself is amazing. Of course. Yeah, there's double the blessings, you could say, right? Of course. And now in terms of when we're talking about treatment and all of that, like we said, first step is to go see a doctor, get a referral to see a specialist, go through all of that. But overall, overall, it's a combination of everything. It's a holistic approach where you do get the medical support, the therapeutic support. And when we talk about Islamic spiritual, it's all these other things that you incorporate after you've done the first step. Again, the analogy of the broken bone. So you've helped the person get the help that they need to begin the healing part, the physical and the emotional part. So let's say the bone is set. It's beginning to heal now. This person can eventually start praying again, let's say, physically, right? So then we, then at this point, this is where I would include the spiritual healing, depending on the client in front of me. Some are people that are not religious, they're not spiritual. Depends on who's in front of you and what approach you take. But those who do want that approach, this is where we bring spirituality and when we talk about listening to da'as and supplications, you know, I have my favorite reciters such as Hajj Abaddar Halawaji, the spiritual uplifting voice, where when you listen to that, what does it do to the spirit? It's lift it up. It feels so light, you feel closer to the divine. That in itself has an incredible power and research has shown that. Psychological research, scientific research has shown that when there is a faith, the direction of the divine in someone's life, there's significant positive outcome in terms of the effect of that on the person. Now, what's beautiful about that is that we've been doing this for 1400 years in our faith. It's there in the Quran, it's there in the Hadith, it's there in the Rwayats, it's there with the Imams. And I actually want to read a quote from Imam Ali that has to do with rules for happiness. So the seven rules of happiness were Imam Ali, alaihi salam. Number one, do not hate anyone regardless of what wrong they do by you. Number two, do not fret regardless of the extent of your worries. It's talking about anxiety, right? Live humbly regardless of how high your status reaches. So again, gratitude, right? Expect good regardless of how much trials you accumulate. So this is working with difficulties in your life, but still having that positive outlook. The Prophet himself knew right there that positive attitude creates positive waves and energy in the world. Give abundantly even if you are deprived generosity when you give to others. This is a huge part of when we talk about depression is volunteering. I encourage my clients to go volunteer in a home, in a homeless shelter, the elderly with the sick children because when you give of yourself even when you're depressed, you feel good that altruism. Imam himself is saying that. Number six, smile even if your heart is bleeding. This is something that I always say to my clients, fake it till you make it. Smile even if you don't feel like it. What happens when you smile? When you're smiling just like the tear, you are triggering neurons in your brain to release the signals that you are happy. Right? So when you're smiling, you are happy. You feel happy. Even though you're not actually feeling, you eventually will. That's why they say smile or laugh. Imam himself is saying that even if your heart is bleeding and the psychological aspect of that is right there, the trigger of the neurons in the brain and the signals, it's amazing how it all works together. Finally the Imam says do not stop your prayers for your fellow human beings in faith even in their absence. Again, this has to do with the incredible part of giving of yourself, spirituality, thinking of others even when you are not feeling well. So let's wrap up in terms of the concept of healing and treatment, eating well, sleeping well, exercise and spirituality. Taking your medication if you are dealing with depression, going to see a counselor and including giving of yourself to others because that in itself gives you meaning and when you find meaning in something, it kind of takes away from your own worries. Thank you so much for all this information. It really is helpful and someone could have had depression and now they know that they should go and get the help that they need. So thank you so much. My pleasure. Respected viewers, thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Keep a look out for more. Peace be upon you.