Holistic Healing: Islam’s Legacy of Mental Health
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How Classical Muslim Scholars Treated the Mind, Body, and Soul | Holistic Healing Series
In the previous episode of this series, we discussed the way Muslim scholars examined mental health illnesses. In this video, Dr. Raniaa Awaad delves into the treatment options these scholars employed. This helps us understand that mental health conditions are multifactorial and we must analyze and examine all contributing factors.
This series was brought to you in collaboration with the Stanford Muslim Mental Health Lab.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. This far into the series you've been hearing me refer to an Islamic approach to treating mental illness. But you might still have that nagging thought that if you or your loved one is suffering from mental illness, that maybe it's because of weak faith. Or, maybe, that going to see a therapist or psychiatrist would somehow mean defying the tests that Allah has given you. And maybe what you're doing is subscribing to Western narratives of self-care and self-help. But if you've seen the other videos in this series, you know better by now. Let's turn our attention to the ultimate goal that most mental health clinicians work with, figuring out how to treat the illnesses that we've been describing in this video so far. In this video, we're going to continue our discussion of Muslim scholars and their notion of treatments and their attempts to demonstrate that even though they recognized the importance of spiritual healing, like our Prophet, they didn't stop there. We'll focus on mental health treatments and strategies of five interdisciplinary scholars. Let's begin. One of the earliest Muslim scholars who wrote about depression was a 9th century scholar by the name of al-Kindi. In his writing, al-Kindi discussed the functions and processes of the soul and suggested cognitive strategies to combat depression. These included adjusting our goals so that we do not, quote, grieve over what we have missed out on. And interestingly, that phrase is the same phrase he found and used in the Quran from Surah al-Hadid, in order to describe this cognitive strategy he was proposing. Then you have in his groundbreaking book, The Paradise of Wisdom, Firdaws al-Hikmah, a 9th century scholar by the name of al-Tabari, who
stressed the importance of building a trusting and working relationship between somebody who's going to seek out therapy for a psychological ailment, let's say depression, and their therapist. He explained that certain patients who suffer from melancholia, which again was this catch-all phrase of mental illness diagnosis, roughly equivalent to depression used by scholars of old, that that person might benefit from talking to a witty physician who could build rapport and trust with that patient. Now, if you've been seeing some of the other videos in the series, you're no stranger to al-Balkhi and his genius. Al-Balkhi was a 9th century scholar and a pioneer in psychotherapy, psychophysiology, and even psychosomatic medicine. And in line with the prophetic approach of treating mental illnesses we presented in the first video, al-Balkhi acknowledged the impact of satanic whispers or waswasa on the psyche, but also used biological and cognitive explanations for mental illnesses. He drew from the Sunnah and encouraged his readers to seek out treatments for these ailments, reminding them that for every illness, God promises that he's going to send its cure. He showed that how rational and spiritual cognitive therapies can be used together to actually treat mental health disorders, and he categorized them so brilliantly. For example, in order to treat phobias, al-Balkhi suggested what he called psyche training. In this training, a person would gradually expose themselves to the subject or object of their fear, while at the same time, eliciting happiness or pleasure. He believed that this balancing of emotions could help the mind unlearn its fear. And this technique for conquering phobias is now called reciprocal inhibition. Even though it was thought to be first described by Joseph Willip in the 20th century, we now know better. This is something al-Balkhi described first. And beyond the treatments that al-Balkhi talked about, he spoke about being proactive
and building psychological resilience. He said that just as individuals keep extra medicine on hand whenever they have a physical ailment, they should do the same for their mental health and store healthy thoughts for difficult times. He was also a pioneer in balancing the mind and body in order to stay healthy. Another famous scholar, this time from the 10th century, is Ibn Sina, also known as Abbasina, or the Doctor of Doctors. He believed that the human spirit is actually equipped with the power of restoring balance in the body and the mind, and that the task of medicine was merely to aid in this process. And for this, he recommended a multitude of treatments, such as accessing medication, meditation, self-awareness, dialogue, reflection, imagery, and a whole host of other psychological conditioning. He introduced approximately 30 medicinal herbs for treating and managing depression. So much so that some of which now have been demonstrated to possess antidepressant-like qualities in clinical trials. The legendary 11th century scholar, Ibn Hamad al-Ghazali, described and aimed to treat several diseases of the heart, such as arrogance and envy, and encouraged people to train self-cognitively and behaviorally to overcome these diseases. He viewed personality as the integration of spiritual and bodily forces, believing that the closeness to Allah is what equals normality, and distance from Allah leads to abnormality. Importantly, al-Ghazali affirmed that psychological illnesses, such as delusional thoughts, can be treated with cognitive strategies, like negative reinforcement, for example, and that cognitive abilities, like imagination, were located in different regions of the brain, like the frontal lobe. His approach to the mind and mental health and well-being was remarkably balanced. He had spirituality, cognitively, spiritually, and physically.
All these therapies came together. Other therapies practiced by Muslims throughout history, included healthy eating, exercise, sleeping well, fasting, and aromatherapy, steam therapy, massage, charity, hijama or cupping, ruqya or spiritual healing, using symbols and metaphors to overcome major difficult events in one's life. Many of these treatments are still used today, and are actually part of what we today would call Islamically integrated psychotherapy. So the takeaway of this video is that scholars accepted mental illnesses and saw them as being multifactorial, that they could come from multiple factors like biology, genetics, environmental, and yes, even spiritually. But not just spiritually. And it's not just because of a weakness of faith. And so these treatment regimens were varied, but they did not just prescribe prayer to combat mental illnesses. They used along with it, pre-modern medications, talk therapies, and other forms of well-being that we discussed previously, in addition to the spiritual remedies. They understood holistic well-being. So it is clear then that our scholars were able to carry out what the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ left as his legacy, in balancing the mind, body, and soul in their attempts to explain psychological ailments. They acknowledged and affirmed that the impact of spiritual forces and mental health, but at the same time were open to and indeed actively pursued other explanations for treatments like medicine, cognitive training, and talking with a trusted learned person, whom today we would call a professional. That with the rapport and trust that were established, that actually this was the way to get better. May Allah ﷻ reward them and benefit us as well from their knowledge, and allow us to be able to seek out treatments, both in a holistic manner, both psychologically, spiritually, and physically, for all the conditions that we undertake.
والحمد لله رب العالمين
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