Dismissed And Detained: British Muslims Face Mental Health Issues

For Muslims in the UK, navigating cultural challenges and clinical prejudice can exacerbate mental health problems.

"I thought I was having a heart attack. I didn't know what was wrong with me." Jamilla Hekmoun, a 26-year-old British Libyan, was in the Jordanian capital, Amman, when she suffered her worst panic attack. 

“I remember the moment I went to the hospital and my heart was racing.” A second-year university student living thousands of miles away from her friends and family, she says she felt “anxious and alone”. 

That was in 2013. She was eventually diagnosed with anxiety and depression around two years later. She is now the founder of Mental Health for Muslims, an online space dedicated to promoting mental wellbeing among British Muslims and the lead author on a recent report that found more than half of young British Muslims have suffered poor mental health, and around a third have had suicidal thoughts. 

The report was based on a survey conducted by the UK charity, Muslim Youth Helpline. It revealed that 32 percent of young British Muslims have suffered suicidal thoughts at some point; 52 percent have suffered from depression, and 63 percent have struggled with anxiety. By contrast, only 16 percent of people in the nation as a whole report experiencing a "common mental disorder" such as depression or anxiety in any given week.

There is some evidence that rates of depression are higher in the British Muslim community than the general population and that Muslims are less likely to seek treatment, but definitive statistics are hard to come by as National Health Service (NHS) data does not include information about religious groups.

It does, however, have some information about the 15 percent of the population who are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. At the time of the 2011 census, nearly 75 percent of Muslims in Britain were from an Asian ethnic background, with smaller percentages of Black African, Arab and white British Muslims. The latest NHS figures show that adults from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are less likely to seek and receive treatment for mental health disorders.

More than 1,000 British Muslims, aged between 16 and 30, completed the survey. The majority reported having a negative experience with health care providers.

'You can't be Muslim and depressed'

Hekman had suffered from anxiety since she was a child but struggled to recognize that her symptoms were a sign of ill health.

As she grew older, she started to worry that her symptoms were a sign that her faith was not strong enough.

When an NHS doctor advised her to take antidepressants, she felt uneasy; worried that it might affect her faith.

The next day she visited her local imam and told him: "I have read you cannot be Muslim and depressed."

Hekman says he replied: "You wouldn't be coming to me and saying that if you broke your leg. But you're saying this over a mental health issue; do what you need to make yourself better."

Sahar Beg is a counselor and psychotherapist who says seeking help for mental health issues can be a daunting task for anyone but can be especially so for Muslims.

“Within the Muslim community itself, they can face a lot of challenges that make it more difficult [to seek help], including a word I don’t like to use - ‘stigma’. They also worry about [what] their families and community as a whole [will think].”

Hekman felt supported by her imam’s response but many Muslims report feeling differently.

Fayza Haq is a 32-year-old optometrist from Glasgow. As a South Asian woman diagnosed with depression, she says seeking help within her Muslim community can be overwhelming.

Some local Muslim leaders, she says, feed the stigma around mental health issues by suggesting they are a result of a lack of faith. "Getting help from your local imam can be all about lecturing and making you feel guilty. It doesn't feel very inviting and as a woman, I don't think they can help with my issues whether it’s marriage or the state of my faith."

Safiyya Dhorat is a chaplain who provides pastoral care at Ebrahim College, an Islamic Institute in East London. She says few local religious leaders have the necessary training to help those suffering from mental health issues.

That explains that there is a framework within Islamic theology that emphasizes the importance of mental wellbeing in Islamic tradition, pointing to the work of prominent Muslim thinkers such as Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (854-925), who wrote ‘Al-Tibb al-ruhani’ (The Spiritual Physick).

"The issue isn't about religious evidence; it's more about the reasons and experience behind the individual's declining mental health and tailoring those with the right scripture to deal with their psychology and situation."

Cultural insensitivity and ‘dismissive’ therapists

For Haq, seeking help through mainstream health services felt just as daunting as reaching out to religious figures for help.

"A lot of the cultural concerns I have, they [the therapists] don't understand. The issues we have, such as marriage, faith or fasting, are hard to explain to someone who isn't Muslim or Asian.

“One of my therapists was quite dismissive about the pressure of marriage, she just said don’t get married. So, the whole session you end up explaining things to them [from your cultural perspective]”.

It can also be difficult to find people in the community who are understanding.

“Three years ago, [when I was unwell] my parents were looking for a [proposal] and wanted me to get married,” Haq explains.

"But it's been difficult because potential spouses can suddenly be weird when they know you have a mental health condition like depression."

Haq later found a Catholic therapist who helped. Despite coming from a different background, she says this therapist understood the importance of faith, marriage, and culture.

A new therapy for Muslim patients

The lack of culturally sensitive therapy available was one of the key motivations behind the creation of a therapy scheme that embraces religion for Muslim patients known as Adapted Behavioural Activation. 

The new therapy method highlights religious passages that address mental wellbeing and illustrates that even those with a “strong faith” can be depressed.

It was pioneered by Dr. Ghazala Mir at the Institute of Health Sciences at Leeds University. The NHS has provided the service to several therapist teams in the north of England and there are plans to launch it in countries with larger Muslim populations.

"Muslim patients have unmet needs in the current [mental health system] - they are under referred to therapy services. When they're in therapy services, they don't get the same outcomes, they get worse outcomes,” Mir explains.

"They face all the kinds of determinants [that could lead to poor] mental health…[including] high levels of racism towards the Muslim community in the UK.”

Last year, nearly half of religious hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales targeted Muslims. And there is evidence that racism, including Islamophobia, can impact an individual's overall mental health. 

And, Mir believes clinical settings can also reflect that racism and Islamophobia.  "You get therapists who also have [negative] stereotypes about Muslims,” she says. “This is not because they want to, it's just the association is so common within the culture at the moment and it affects therapists as well."

Disproportionate detention

Sometimes that combination of negative stereotypes and a lack of understanding can have severe consequences. And it is not only therapists who struggle with it. Paramedics and police officers are often the first responders when mental health issues arise.

More than half of young British Muslims have suffered poor mental health [Zahra Warsame/Al Jazeera] 

Azeezat Aboderin is a 28-year-old counseling student who has sectioned 10 years ago under the UK's Mental Health Act in London. Prior to this, she had never even been assessed by mental health specialists.

As a British Nigerian, Aboderin's sectioning reflects the pattern of disproportionate detention experienced by black patients in the UK. The 2019 annual Mental Health Act report from the NHS states that "black or black British" individuals are four times more likely to be detained than their "white or white British" peers.

Aboderin was detained after her family called paramedics, believing that she needed help. The paramedics called the police. She recalls the police arriving, her belief that they were spiritual beings and her attempts to spit three times. "I felt really scared. I remember the police coming, trying to detain me because it seemed I was just spitting at them.

It is a religious tradition among some Muslims to spit three times to seek refuge from the devil, but for the police and paramedics on the scene, it was interpreted as evidence of a severe breakdown.

Aboderin was handcuffed, transported to a hospital and detained under the Mental Health Act. About a month later she was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder.

Aboderin says she understands why the police and paramedics reacted as they did but felt "violated".

Kairo Maynard, a mental health clinician, says: "[Data] shows that black people are the highest to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, yet [among] the lowest to receive care."

The over-use of detention, Maynard says, could be one of the reasons why individuals in the "black community may not want to seek help or support if they are experiencing poor mental health".

The disproportionate use of sectioning "without an offer of treatment takes away the individuals' humanity," she adds.

Ten years on, Aboderin says that despite the negative experience her eventual diagnosis was a source of empowerment because it allowed her to understand that she was just ill and there was nothing more sinister wrong with her.

“Yes, okay I have Bipolar [disorder] but I don't think that's something that I should let define me," she reflects.