Dismissed and detained: British Muslims face mental health issues – By Zahra Warsame (Al Jazeera) / March 9 2020
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 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.
Continue to article: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/dismissed-detained-british-muslims-face-mental-health-issues-200225044954140.html
