What opening up about my mental health taught me as a young Muslim man

Topics mentioned: Muslim mental health, family

About: Shah describes his experience of opening up about mental health as a young Muslim man, and shares his advice on overcoming the challenges of generational differences.

Being a young Muslim is part of my personal identity. My faith keeps me grounded and focused on living a lifestyle that is healthy, progressive, self-actualising, and it helps me to improve myself in all aspects of my personal being.

I believe Islam teaches a lifestyle that promotes core family values, community networking, and it reminds us to refrain from activities and behaviours that would be detrimental or damaging. Not only to ourselves and our health, but also to the people around us.

During times when I’ve struggled with my mental health, the thing I’ve needed the most was someone who could empathise with what I was going through as a Muslim.

I’ve had to deal with stereotypes and expectations within my own community and network, especially from my family. Sometimes I’ve felt isolated, and I learned the hard way that there was a stark difference in attitudes towards mental health between my generation and the previous one.

I’ve grown up within an environment where mental health is hardly ever properly addressed. There would be times when my older uncles and aunts would refuse to acknowledge that I was going through difficult moments.

I was also raised to fulfil certain duties and maintain certain standards for my family’s reputation and the opinion of others in the community. I’ve realised that the two go hand in hand sometimes.

I suffered in silence quite a lot,  as I found myself dealing with toxic friends, colleagues and overall terrible people to be associated with. I was stuck in a whirlwind of struggling, and not knowing where to go for help.

I was around 22 when I first explained to someone that I’d quit my job as I felt it was draining my mental health and making me live a very destructive lifestyle.

For me, it took only this one instance of my mental health concerns being dismissed, for me to realise that my way of thinking was very different to older relatives in my family. From that point on, I never opened up about my mental health or experiences again without first finding out the other person’s understanding of mental health.

I’ve never been willing to accept that a person should allow themselves to suffer just because it was ‘expected’ of them to simply put up with it.

Over time, things did change within my extended family. Relatives have slowly become more open and accepting of the struggles that we as humans go through.

I began to find it easier to open up to people about not only my identity as a Muslim, but also concerns I had in general, like my career, hobbies and interests, or even something as simple as relationship advice. I also managed to connect with people online who had gone through similar experiences to me.

They'd also been told to ‘suck it up’ or ‘man up’ and ‘get on with life’, instead of having their concerns properly addressed. This helped me to feel less alone.