Changing the Narrative on Suicide in Muslim Communities

With American Muslims twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to the national average, psychiatrist and Stanford Impact Labs Design Fellow Rania Awaad has sought to address the taboo in many Muslim American communities by conducting targered research and creating a nuanced curriculum for training religious and community leaders. 

She partly attributes the vulnerability of American Muslims to suicide to the community’s sense of exclusion, fueled by anti-Islamic rhetoric and policies. This external factor is exacerbated by the explicit prohibition of suicide in Islam, making the topic “the taboo within the taboo of mental health,” Awaad explains. 

While running the Muslim Mental Health and Islamic Psychology Lab at Stanford Medicine, she has expanded her academic work by reaching broader populations. Since 2022, Awaad and the nonprofit she’s founded, Maristan, have provided suicide response training to hundreds of imams across the United States and organized numerous mental health awareness events to decrease the stigma surrounding suicide among religious leaders.

She and her lab published a 100-page suicide prevention manual to serve as a culturally relevant, evidence-based guide for community leaders. The manual is accompanied by an eight-hour curriculum that combines tools from mainstream psychiatry with Islamic context to more effectively reach people in need of support. 

“If you’re going to touch something as taboo as a mortal sin in someone’s belief system, you have to come at it from within the faith itself,” Awaad says. “When you start there, you can build trust to bring in cutting-edge research.”

Read the full Stanford Report on Rania Awaad’s work in changing the way suicide is regarded within Muslim community and saving lives in the process.