Getting real help
Self help is a real thing and it has real limits. Here is where those limits are, and what to do when you are past them.
If you are not safe
- Immediate danger, anywhere Your country’s emergency number. North America 911. Britain and Ireland 999. The European Union and Turkey 112. Australia 000. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar 999. India, Nigeria and Russia 112. Malaysia and Bangladesh 999. Egypt 122 for police. Pakistan 15 for police.
- If you cannot speak safely in the UK Call 999, wait for the operator, then press 55. Silence on its own does not bring help. Pressing 55 does.
- Canada and the United States Call or text 988. It is a statutory service, free, 24 hours, every day.
- Britain NHS 111, then the mental health option. Free, 24 hours, and it reaches your local crisis team.
- Anywhere else A hospital emergency department has to see you and is open at three in the morning. Your doctor can see you in the day.
When self help is not the right tool
Please take these to a professional rather than to a website. Not because you are too much, but because these respond to something a page cannot give you.
- You are thinking about ending your life, or hurting yourself Reach a person today.
- Something has happened to you that you cannot get away from Trauma responds well to treatment, and it responds badly to being handled alone.
- Someone in your home is frightened of you, or you are frightened of them This needs specialist help, and there is help.
- You cannot eat, or cannot sleep, or cannot function, for weeks That is a clinical picture, and it is treatable.
- You are hearing or seeing things others do not, or your thoughts feel out of your control See a doctor. This is treatable and treating it early matters.
- You are using something to cope and cannot stop Speak to a doctor before you change anything.
Faith and treatment are not rivals
Being told to pray more is not treatment, and taking treatment is not weak faith. Both can be true at once, and the research is fairly clear that for a practising Muslim, care that fits their faith is care they are more likely to stay with.
Symptoms that feel spiritual are worth taking seriously and are also worth having looked at medically. Those two things do not cancel each other out, and nobody here is going to tell you which one it is. That is a conversation for a person who knows you.
Finding someone
- Your family doctor Still the fastest route into publicly funded care in most countries.
- A hospital, if it is urgent An emergency department is open at three in the morning and it has to see you.
- Your country’s regulator Wherever psychotherapists, psychologists or social workers are regulated, the regulator keeps a public register you can search, and it is a safer starting point than a listing site. In Ontario that is the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario and the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers.
- Asking for care that fits your faith You are allowed to ask, at a first appointment, whether a clinician has worked with Muslim clients and how they would handle the religious side. A good one will answer plainly. This works better than searching for a label.
Inshirah does not take referrals, does not run a clinic, and has no financial relationship with anyone named here. We deliberately do not list charities or helpline directories. Organisations close and numbers get disconnected, and a dead number on a page like this one is worse than no number. Everything above is either a state run emergency service, a statutory register, or an institution that exists in every country.