Why Mental Health?

After becoming Muslim over 20 years ago, I witnessed many different types of social issues and tragedies. From wars overseas, to an inability of members of the Muslim community accept one another as equals, to domestic violence, marital strife and teens using substances and cutting themselves. Over those 20 some years, I have witnessed many maladies and issues pervade our communities and go relatively unaddressed. Because of stigma and shame, people are often afraid to seek help or may not know where or how to find it.

Last fall a non-Muslim professor of mine approached me and asked me to start a show called simply, Muslims and Mental Health. He is the founder of therapycable.com and felt our part of the population was missing access to mental health care, and appropriately considerate care in terms of religious beliefs and cultural considerations. I agreed with his sentiments, especially since the standard text for teaching diversity in mental health programs only included four pages about Muslims and within these four pages were Muslims who were also Arab. In other words, Muslims = Arabs. This leaves out a whole lot of people and does not promote an accurate understanding of Muslims. So there are two issues 1) Muslims lack of access, understanding and support for mental health services and 2) Clinicians lack of sensitivity to treating Muslim clients. We launched in January first discussing the purpose of the show, which can be seen here: 

http://therapycable.com/mediaitem/260-sister-heather-laird.html

Our first Muslims and Mental Health show looked at Seeking a Therapist: What you need to know and can be seen here:

http://therapycable.com/mediaitem/265-seeking-a-therapist-what-you-need-to-know.html

Why This Matters...

Muslims are suffering all over the world. The Muslims and Mental Health Series is designed to educate both the Muslim community and the broader community about Muslims and Mental Health issues within our community. This series is the first of its kind and is groundbreaking for both the Muslim community and for professionals developing sensitivity to working with Muslim clients.  As a Muslim Mental Health Advocate, I am hosting the show. Our episodes address practical solutions for our communities around the issues of mental health. Eventually, we want to have a live format, which allows people to ask questions in the here-and-now.

Why We Need This Now!

More and more people are turning to online resources for help. And, our social issues are multiplying not diminishing. This series is relevant as it seeks to reduce stigma in Muslims seeking psychotherapy as well as reducing ignorance to those who provide services to Muslim clientele. And, it demonstrates through the various interviews that there is a way to integrate mental health with Islamic understandings and principles. We have seen third spaces develop as a result of our communities inabilities to communicate effectively with one another. Part of this is directly do to elements of mental health, such as personality. We can work on this together for a better community and we can start through this program. It allows people the opportunity to seek resources anonymously and with anonymity who might be discouraged to otherwise.

The Project: Muslims and Mental Health

We have already launched a few shows, but we need support to continue our efforts. What we are really looking for is viewers, commentators and advertisers. Everyone can help by either watching, contributing positive commentary on episodes or sponsoring the show through advertisement. Every 15 minutes we show one advertisement. Our average viewership is close to 150 viewers per episode.  This will increase with the addition of the show to the Muslim Mental Health website: http://www.muslimmentalhealth.com/ thanks in part to Dr. Hamada Hamid,  and to new viewers like you. And, we need some advertisers for the program or a philanthropist who would like to sponsor the cost of producing the program. The cost is very small as these things work. It costs about $500 a show to produce, edit, film, etc. Guests include experts from around the globe on various mental health issues working in collaboration with Islamic scholars, imams and community leaders.

What YOU Can Do Now to Help This Project