Do you need a therapist?
Questioning the secular approach to 'mental health'
Do Muslims need therapists? While it is crucial to upkeep one’s mental health, one’s spiritual health is even more important. Yet in the current Muslim discourse, there is an increasing emphasis on the former and much less so on the latter.
Muslims should be emphatic about encouraging people to regularly see a “spiritual health professional.”
Today, it is fashionable for Muslims to widely promote average people with average stress to spend up to $150 an hour seeking therapy in order to help them succeed in the Dunya. While this is a relatively positive phenomenon Muslims should be even more emphatic about encouraging average people to regularly see a “spiritual health professional” (i.e. a developmental Shaikh) for no cost at all, in order to help them succeed in the Akhirah.
As Allah relates to us in the Quran:
“Musa said to him (Khidr), “May I follow you, provided that you teach me some of the right guidance you have been taught?” The Cave 66
May Allah aid us in seeking both mental health and spiritual development.
Imam Hamzah Abdul-Malik is the resident scholar of Midtown Mosque and founder of Quranic Compass, an online Quranic institute fostering love, appreciation, and understanding of the word of God. Learn more at Quraniccompass.com.
Agreed, and if anything, the community should invest in the education of its faith and spiritual leaders such that they gain various trainings so they can serve not only as spiritual coaches but also assist according to their capabilities with mental health challenges. Mental health and spiritual health are not divorced from one another after all.