 I'm going to talk about something that's really difficult to talk about but it is imperative that we actually talk about it. But I'm going to give everybody a trigger warning and tell you because it's very heavy and because it might get heavier than even expected if you need to give yourself time and space to step away please do so and when you're ready feel free to come back but it is a heavy conversation oops the mic's not being nice today it is a heavy conversation because those of us in the mental health field who have been working with the muslim community for a long time we've been seeing changes over time some of these changes are actually not necessarily new it's just that we're more alert to them and in the topic of mental health would you guys agree that in the last five years at least there's been a lot more conversations around mental health than ever before do you remember how in your message and maybe that's still true in your community centers and other spaces that you're in they would never really have a topic on mental health and call it mental health I remember in a time where when we wanted to do topics that were very specific like for example substance abuse and we would want to actually call it that there would be one person to show up in the room and then they would actually start pulling people from the hallway like come on in come on in because it was so taboo and so difficult to talk about that nobody wanted to go in or even be associated with somebody that went into the room to talk about mental health lest they too be called crazy so panel of the tides have shifted you have actresses and actors activists athletes all people to all types of people who are open and talking about mental health now and how they're seeking out therapy and support and they're being open about that journey and you have on the other hand a lot of our religious leaders and imams I realize it may not be your imam okay but there are in fact those within the religious community that are also standing up and saying all right enough is enough we're going to be open and talk about this there are even some who are willing to say that they themselves or their family members are going through therapy and I think that's an amazing change of tides but here's what I'm going to talk about today even with the changes that are happening there's some real serious stuff so panel lot not just the mental illnesses that you may hear about that have names like depression or anxiety bipolar disorder schizophrenia and so on and so on but also things that maybe don't necessarily have names or you don't know what to call them within yourselves or your loved ones just feelings of angst if anything that this pandemic taught us is that all kinds of uncertainty is coming with it when is this going to end I don't know am I really truly you know vaccinated enough and against Omicron I don't know right as a panel there's just so much uncertainty and that builds in you a sense of anxiety and angst even if you're not somebody that has clinical anxiety right isolation which many of us going into lockdown at a lockdown into lockdown at a lockdown it's been hard and the close quarters you've kept with family and those whoever you live with roommates and so on or if you've been completely isolated alone is also wrecked havoc on ourselves and so I think finally the conversation around mental health is finally being had in a more open manner and you know me I'm all about this is not a new story to the Muslims if you've heard me speak before you've heard me talk about the history of mental health and the heritage of mental health and how Muslims had always been at the forefront of this discussion always because in our world view as Muslims mind body and soul are together you never separate them out and because of that the early Muslims always had treatment centers and healing centers for all kinds of mental health conditions and they were the first to do what you guys answer come on they were the first to build what and what are the matter stands the hospitals the healing centers that had what in them that had in them yes my body and soul but what do they have that was special that no other hospitals in the history of humankind had before the Muslims mental health wars exactly when you think about how do you have a civilization that the others before Greeks and Romans and all the rest couldn't do what is it about Islam that prompted that because there's something and this is where we're going to talk about when people have that stigma or that shame or I'm not going to go and get help this is very important to remember that you all we all are part of the heritage that never separated out mind body and soul they were always connected and because of that our healing centers and institutions it's no surprise that they had the mental health within it I'm talking about talk therapy did you know Muslims were the some of the first to develop talk therapy you know the talk therapy that your mama tells you or your hana or whoever tells you no no no no no no no we Muslims don't do that that is a shame to us that somebody would say that Muslims don't do that when the Muslims themselves are the ones who created talk therapy come on now subhanallah sound therapy music therapy natural sounds and feelings emotions with aroma therapy and color and sound all of it was integrated into these healing centers why do I make a big fuss about this because I'm tired of the stigma I'm tired of the shame that surrounds mental health and I'm tired of people when they're talking about this topic calling others like it's an other thing like it doesn't affect them they're the ones who are crazy and don't call me that because I don't have that the reality is we all have that you can't have lived through this pandemic and not have something related to mental health with my all deference and respect to you every one of us if it's not clinically diagnosed it is there right under the surface whether it be a depression or an anxiety or something more serious it is right under the surface in each and every person am I making too bold of a statement am I exaggerating so the end of the line for mental health when we worry about people not getting the help they need either they start to spiral down and things get really tough right and they think I can do this by myself I'm a man I'm a believer I believe in God I can do this God's going to see me through inshallah God will see you through but God also gave you the means to get the help you need the means the early Muslims when they built these institutions that I'm talking about this was a lip service to the sunnah this was actually understanding the sunnah this was understanding the hadith that say things like when Allah sends down an illness he sends down it's cure well for Allah's going to send illnesses like mental illnesses and clearly he's also has for them what cures treatments professionals people who know how to help you this is part of our sunnah and the early Muslims had no shame and stigma around this in fact they built these amazing beautiful institutions fountains and greenery we have these papers coming I'm not the worry with our research papers you can read them inshallah at our website at the lab the Stanford Muslim Mental Health and Islamic Psychology Lab talking about the talk therapies the music therapy the aroma therapies the gardens and so on and so forth holistic holistic I named the nonprofit that relates to my lab Maristan after these institutions because it is my dream inshallah that we revive the matter stems this is my dream inshallah we're going to do this we're going to do this we're actually going to revive this Islamic tradition heritage where when you get the help you need it's holistic it has mind body and soul it has the spirituality because as Muslims you don't take that away from us you've got to keep the slam in it you've got to keep the connection to God in it and honestly secular psychology has lost its soul that's not me talking that's what the literature says and now the new wave is bring your whole self into therapy well everyone in this room for you to bring your whole self into therapy that means bringing all of your identities into therapy and if you were a Muslim that's one of your identities is that right so now i'm going to tell you something that's really difficult the end of the line when people do not get help not only do they effect they're affected themselves but their family members are too their loved ones their friends it's a ripple effect you have to realize it's not just you and when you say i'm going to rely on myself i'm going to do this alone you don't realize that sometimes not only are you harming yourself but you're also harming the people around you because they don't know what to do either they see you suffering they want you to be better and it's affecting them too so there's a certain part when people say i'm going to do this on myself that's selfish part of connecting to the broader circles is understanding that you are part of a bigger system and when we don't get the help we need the end of the line that i worry about and the reason we wrote the paper that you just heard about and published it this summer and people kept saying don't publish that don't publish that it's going to make the muslims look bad well even after we published and i'm telling you in the highest ranking medical journal jamma which is the journal of american medical association it is hard to get anything in that journal unless it's like really rigorous and really well studied even after it was published there we had people imams and different people and so on and not just imams even regular people call it false news fake news i'm like really people really have you seen the community lately masha'Allah do you know how to do research no anyway masha'Allah i don't know i love it but the but the reality is it was so hard for people to stomach the results that came out of it so what were the results in brief we compared muslims to all other faith groups christians jews hindus buddhists and people of no faith atheists and agnostics and when we compared suicide attempts okay this is where the trigger wording comes in attempts we found that muslims had double yes i just said double double the rates of suicide attempts from other faith groups or non-faith groups i didn't expect that i knew it was high because i could see it in my practice and i could see in all the people that i supervise in all the cases that are coming through for mental health i could see it we knew there was something high but we didn't know how high now mind you i didn't say death by suicide because that's a different category and alhamdulillah that's a lot of muslims are still at the very low end of that but when you increase attempts you're going to increase deaths by suicide eventually too it's going to catch up and that's the fear so what do you do so i'm going to share something with you because when people hear bad news they're like oh no now what now what this lab that we do the research in and i told you about the nonprofit we started i am committed like 110 committed to making sure that all of our muslim leaders are activists our community and religious leaders are all trained to work on this topic of suicide it is not easy i went through entire medical school and psychiatric residency and high-level specialty i'm a professor at stanford subhanallah and i didn't know how to deal with this i had to get extra training in this if anybody feels like they know how to do this even as a mental health professional they don't it is specialized training to talk about suicide prevention which is all about education and this is i want you to know some very important things before we kind of close today with this topic one suicide is a hundred percent preventable there is no other mental health condition that i can tell you about that is a hundred percent preventable this one is because it's about education it's about knowing the signs it's about intervention it's about helping it's about bridging people to care before it gets too late now i know there might be people here who have lost loved ones to suicide and my all my love goes to you may all make it easy for you and you may be thinking but how was that was that prevent subhanallah i'm not talking about individual cases rather i'm looking into the future and telling you that if there is solid interventions in place and our communities are willing to talk about this very difficult thing and be trained how to appropriately intervene we can prevent so much you know what inspires me there is an ayah in the Quran that you know as well or allah says whoever saves a life it is though they have saved all of humanity this is a this is a muslim driven mission it is part and parcel of our islam when someone says no that's not part of our story it is so you know what i want you to do if you're already on social media people parents get mad at me they're like you to told our kids to get on social media i'm like your kids already aren't social media friends mashaAllah if you are there check out the handle go to maristan at maristan underscore org m a r i stan st an i want you to follow that account specifically because this is where all the trainings and education is coming out we're putting out mashaAllah every week is coming out all kinds of resources that handle and also the one for the lab the muslim health and islamic psychology lab at stanford if you want little kind of knowledge bites size but you know bite size pieces around mental health these are some great accounts to follow because we're constantly taking all that academic research that we're doing and translating into things that all of you can benefit from we have these articles and we have these little charts of things are like what happens what to say and what not to say well la hispanela sometimes people just get stuck they want to say something they want to help someone who's in trouble or they feel like someone is not doing well or maybe someone has had a loved one who actually did pass from suicide and they feel stuck they don't know what to say and then you worry about saying the wrong thing and then you don't say anything at all and that's just like a whole spiral right so we have these tips and techniques for you if you check the website and you follow it you can download all kinds of resources to help you and your communities i want you whatever message you come from whatever community center or you know organization you're connected to go to that page maristan.org go and download the khutbas and give it to your msa khatib give it to your imams there is ones that literally completely written out on suicide prevention and it follows all the standardized really rigorous scientific knowledge on how do you talk about suicide but of course all the fifth parts of the correct ways of saying the khutba written the whole thing is written out there's one on prevention there's one on postvention which is what you do in the aftermath there are resources for you at your fingertips if you know where to go and look at them so please do and the last thing i'll say and shah about this topic is we have a campaign it launches in just a few days it's called the 500 imams campaign that maristan is launching you know what the goal is that no less than 500 imams religiously trained women and men ustad and ustadas are trained in suicide response and certified in it in 2022 inshallah the goal inshallah inshallah inshallah the manual that comes with that we took years of writing years of research but it's like a hundred page manual and you can't really give a local leader a manual a hundred pages and say now go do this so we develop the training and everything is kind of what we call in medicine and science evidence spaced so we do all this research and make sure it's working alhamdulillah we have all of our irb and ethics approval not the not the boring research stuff that i'm going to bore you with but just to let you know that this is very sound information but you know what's special about it every resource that i looked on on the topic of suicide was either too secular so when you tried to give it to the religious leaders yeah it didn't really work and on the other hand there were other resources but they weren't scientifically rigorous enough they weren't accurate so we took the two and kind of married them together so now these imams and community leaders and youth leaders and msa leaders and so on they realize that the training that they're getting is something that speaks directly to them what do i do at the janaza prayer do i make du'a for this person how do i help the person the family that's left behind and so on and so forth all of this is dealt with in the training and it's a certificate training and all of you can eventually take this as well because we hope to make it virtual inshallah to ala if there's anyone here who's interested in kind of supporting this and kind of making sure that it comes to your communities let us know you go to baristan.org and kind of let us know talk to us in there or through our dms and our social media but here's what i want to tell you the last study that came out about how many muslim centers are there in america do you know how many there are how many message do we have in america that's not a lot i love it give me a number very close 2500 it's really close it's about 3000 3000 message in america you know what my five-year plan for maristan is i want all 3000 message are trained say amen and with that inshallah turning it over to linda inshallah but we'll keep on this conversation going because we need to have these conversations going we need them to be open but i'll tell you what else we need them to be we need them to be grounded in accurate knowledge this is where the researcher and professor and dr me comes out okay but we also needed to be grounded in actual islamic information and this is where my sharia training comes out you got to put the two together in order for it to actually work for our communities so may Allah bless you may this come as ease and help to your communities inshallah and please do make do out and support the missions because these are not easy trust me it is not easy to roll out mental health work or to even get it funded but please inshallah with your duaz and support because we like the is says we need to save even the one life you've saved like all of humanity and all of us about us is about a lot of people most of all want to say