What does Islam say about mental health?

Short answer: Islam does not treat mental illness as a sign of weak faith or as a punishment. The Prophet ﷺ said that Allah has not sent down any disease without sending down a cure for it, and he told people to seek treatment. So a Muslim living with anxiety, depression or any other condition should see a doctor or a therapist, and keep up prayer, dua and the Quran alongside it. A person who has lost the use of their mind is not held to account for what they do while they are ill.

The mind in Islam

Muslim jurists such as al-Ghazali and al-Shatibi taught that the sharia protects five things: religion, life, the mind, family lineage and property. The mind (aql) is on that list because it is what makes a person accountable. It is one reason intoxicants are forbidden, and it is why caring for your mental health is not a modern add-on to the deen. It is part of it.

The Quran also speaks openly about the inner life. It names fear, grief, anxiety and despair, and it shows prophets feeling them. It describes human nature honestly:

The verse is not blame. It is a description, followed in the next verses by the people who are protected from the worst of it: those who keep up their prayer. That pattern runs through the Quran: it names the struggle, then gives a way through it.

Is mental illness a sign of weak iman?

No. The best of people felt deep distress and said so to Allah. Yaqub grieved for Yusuf for years and said:

Complaining to Allah is not impatience. When the Companions told the Prophet ﷺ that terrible thoughts came into their minds, thoughts they could not bear to say aloud, he did not call it weak faith. He said: "That is clear faith."¹ Scholars explain that hating such thoughts is itself a sign of iman. Many people with obsessive doubts (waswas) find great relief in this hadith.

Every hardship a believer bears also wipes away sins. The Prophet ﷺ said that no tiredness, illness, worry, grief, harm or distress reaches a Muslim, even a thorn that pricks him, without Allah removing some of his sins because of it.² For more on sadness and the duas for grief, read depression and sadness in Islam.

Seeking treatment is part of the Sunnah

Some Bedouins asked the Prophet ﷺ whether they should seek treatment. He said: "Yes, servants of Allah, seek treatment, for Allah has not made a disease without making a cure for it," except one, old age.³ Scholars took this as covering every kind of illness, of the body or of the mind.

• Therapy and counselling are allowed. If you can, find a therapist who respects your faith, but a good therapist of any background is better than none.
• Prescribed medicine is allowed, and taking it is part of seeking the cure Allah has sent. Ask the pharmacist if you are unsure about an ingredient.
• Trusting Allah (tawakkul) does not mean refusing treatment. The Prophet ﷺ himself was treated when he was ill, and he told others to seek cures.

Jinn, the evil eye and mental illness

Muslims believe that jinn and the evil eye are real (see jinn in Islam). But most mental illness is illness, and it should be treated as illness. Reciting ruqyah from the Quran, such as Al-Fatiha, Ayat al-Kursi and the last three surahs, is a sunnah, and it can be done alongside medical care, not instead of it.

Be careful of "healers" who charge large fees, who hit or frighten the patient, or who tell you to stop your medicine. None of that comes from the Sunnah, and it can do serious harm.

A thousand years of Muslim care

Muslim physicians wrote about the mind long before modern psychology. Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, a scholar of the ninth and tenth centuries, wrote Masalih al-Abdan wa al-Anfus (The Sustenance of Bodies and Souls), which treats the body and the soul as two sides of health and discusses sadness, fear, anger and obsessive thoughts, with talking cures for each. The great hospitals (bimaristans) of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, such as the Nuri hospital founded in 1154 and the Mansuri hospital founded in 1284, had wards for people with mental illness, cared for at public expense.⁴

The rulings people ask about

Accountability. The Prophet ﷺ said the pen is lifted from three: the sleeper until he wakes, the child until he grows up, and the one who has lost his mind until he recovers.⁵ A person whose illness takes away their reason is not sinful for what they do in that state. Ordinary anxiety or depression does not take away reason, so prayer and fasting remain due, but Allah knows the weight each person carries and "does not charge a soul except [with that within] its capacity" (Quran 2:286).

Prayers missed during a severe illness.

Fasting. If a doctor advises that fasting will harm you, or your medicine must be taken during the day, you are excused as a sick person, and you make up the days or pay fidya if you will never be able to fast. See the Ramadan fasting rules.

Suicide. The Quran says "do not kill yourselves" (4:29), and taking one's own life is a major sin. Scholars also note that a person overwhelmed by illness may not be fully in control, and that the judgement belongs to Allah, who is Merciful. The janazah prayer is still prayed for a Muslim who died this way. If you are having these thoughts, please use the numbers at the top of this page now.

Habits from the Sunnah that help

• Prayer as rest. The Prophet ﷺ would say: "Bilal, call the iqamah, and give us rest by it."⁶ Prayer was his comfort, not a burden.
• Remembrance. "Unquestionably, by the remembrance of Allah hearts are assured" (13:28). A few minutes of dhikr each day is a habit, not a cure, but it steadies the heart.
• Talking to someone. After the first revelation, the Prophet ﷺ came home shaking and told Khadijah, "I fear for myself." She comforted him and took him to someone who could help.⁷ Telling a trusted person is a sunnah.
• Hope. "For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease" (94:5 to 6).

FAQ

Sources

1. Sahih Muslim 132, from Abu Hurayrah.
2. Sahih al-Bukhari 5641 and 5642, from Abu Said al-Khudri and Abu Hurayrah.
3. Sunan Abu Dawud 3855 and Jami at-Tirmidhi 2038, from Usamah ibn Sharik; graded sahih by al-Albani, and hasan sahih by at-Tirmidhi.
4. On al-Balkhi: Malik Badri, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi's Sustenance of the Soul (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2013). On the bimaristans: the histories of the Nuri hospital of Damascus and the Mansuri hospital of Cairo.
5. Sunan Abu Dawud 4398, from Aishah; also 4403, from Ali. Graded sahih by al-Albani.
6. Sunan Abu Dawud 4985, from a man of Khuza'ah; graded sahih by al-Albani.
7. Sahih al-Bukhari 3, from Aishah, the beginning of revelation.
8. On missed prayers during a loss of reason: Hanafi, al-Marghinani, al-Hidayah, chapter on the prayer of the sick; for the other schools, the standard manuals of each.
9. Quran 70:19, 12:86, 2:286, 4:29, 13:28 and 94:5 to 6, Arabic from the Uthmani text, translation by Sahih International.

The rulings on this page are pending review by the scholars on our team.