Inside the push to bring mental health care into American mosques

(RNS and NPR) — Sabrina Ali grew up in a South Asian home in Canton, a multicultural suburb of Detroit, and said she learned from a young age that she couldn’t talk about her mental health struggles with her immigrant parents.

“It was like they just came from a totally different world … and for them it was like, ‘Well, what do you have to be depressed about? Like, you’re 13, you have a good home, you have a good family, like, you have food on the table,’” said Ali, now a stay-at-home mother and former teacher.

She said her parents meant well and suggested she pray more to resolve her internal struggles, “to be more religious, essentially, quote, unquote, whatever that meant to them.”

But in college, when she began struggling with recurring nightmares, Ali knew she needed outside help. She began attending therapy through the Counseling and Psychological Services or CAPS program, a free counseling program for full-time students. CAPS, which is offered on college campuses around the country, offered Ali a private entryway to seek counseling services without having to tell her parents.

“Maybe God is testing me, but even my decision, the path towards making the decision to seek professional help, I think, in a way, was also a test, you know, because what is the saying, trust in God, but tie your camel, right?”

Seeking mental health care can be complicated for many American Muslims, who, like Ali, often grow up learning therapy is shameful and problems should be kept private or within the family. When there is conflict, they are urged to go to an imam first for advice. Now, a growing number of mosques are hoping to make therapy more accessible to Muslims who want it, in part by offering it themselves.

Last year, the Islamic Center of Detroit launched its My Mental Wellness Clinic, offering free mental health services to area residents and mosque attendees. The clinic started as a youth-led initiative, after the center’s youth committee began introducing mental health topics to the mosque, starting with workshops and art therapy activities in 2016.

Danish Hasan, health director at the My Mental Wellness Clinic in Detroit, knows the success of the program depends on overcoming barriers to access. 

“We have a little bit more stigma than some of the other communities,” he said, adding that the clinic hopes to normalize taking care of one’s wellbeing.

Hasan believes the initial work by the youth committee has been critical to the success of the clinic.

“It kind of introduced the community to mental health over the last few years,” he said, noting that about 1 in 5 of their patients are under 18.

The youth are more self-aware, Hasan said, and “are trying to push their parents to come to therapy and also to bring themselves to therapy.”

For Mohamed Magid, an imam and resident scholar of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, also known as the ADAMS Center, it became clear to him early in his career that some people needed more support than he could offer.

“Sometimes they ask for us to pray for them, and we do provide that spiritual support, but I realized that some of them really might be suffering from mental health issues and they need somebody to help them,” he said.

To bridge this gap, ADAMS Center opened a mental health program about 13 years ago. The program offers some mental health services inside the mosque but also contracts to 17 providers to offer subsidized services for 12 sessions.

They also serve the community at large. For Magid, showing people that imams and therapists can work together goes a long way.

“When you tell them this is a partnership between me and a mental health provider, both of us who can help you, they feel relief,” he said.

Maristan Clinic is a holistic mental health clinic that offers combinations of faith, therapy and psychology. Photo courtesy Maristan Clinic

In California, similar services are provided at the Maristan Clinic, a holistic mental health clinic that is a part of The Muslim Community Center of East Bay, a faith-based organization and mosque. Along with therapy provided by a Muslim therapist, clients can request Islamic psychology, or the integration of faith into therapy.

For example, a patient who has obsessive-compulsive disorder, exploring an Islamic psychology session might include learning about Islamic regulations for wudu or ablutions as a way to cope with religious compulsions: “How much time, and how many limits of how much to wash, how many times to pray or redo your prayers,” explains the founder of the Maristan Clinic, Rania Awaad, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Providers can point to a hadith, or a teaching of the prophet, to draw the point home. “Bringing in, well here’s the hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Salam that says no more than three washings in wudu,” Awaad said.

Awaad, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, said mosques are community gathering spaces, and, in her research, many American Muslims want mosques to have mental health centers.

“To have the mental health services is a major pro. It’s built in. It’s within the same institution that they’re already attending and that they trust,” she said.

Last year at the opening ceremony of the Islamic Center of Detroit’s My Mental Wellness Clinic, Hasan welcomed a crowd of state dignitaries and community members.

“We’re gathered here today to celebrate a vital initiative that has the power to transform lives in our community,” he said. “The idea with this project is to be visible, to be present, to be accessible and affordable for those that we serve.”

This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and RNS. Listen to the radio version of the story.