A LOCAL think tank, The Centre, reported in April that out of 1,048 respondents surveyed across the country, 22 per cent complained that they experienced severe and extremely severe anxiety, with 20 and 15 per cent reporting severe and extremely severe depression and stress.
When people have anxiety or depression as a result of losing a job, for instance, they are advised to seek psychiatric treatment at a hospital.
At any hospital, mental patients are treated with anti-depressants, besides other relief tools, such as exercising more, eating healthy foods and talking with friends.
On top of that, government hospitals have received hundreds of calls daily from Malaysians who complained about their mental wellbeing since January.
Indeed, depression is like a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy one's wellbeing. I believe we should use whatever positive ways to help people with mental health issues.
So going spiritual can help people manage mental health illness while they grasp with reality, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the West, spirituality can mean different concepts to different people, but at its core, spirituality can help a person understand one's life context. It's not necessarily connected to a specific belief system or even religious worship. It arises from one's connection with oneself and with others, the development of one's personal value system and the search for meaning in life.
For many, spirituality takes the form of religious observance, prayer, meditation or a belief in a higher power.
For others, it can be found in nature, music, art or a secular community. Spirituality is different for everyone. It has many benefits for stress relief and can help mental patients to feel a sense of purpose.
By clarifying what's most important, one can focus less on unimportant things and eliminate stress. The more people feel that they have a purpose in the world, the less solitary they may feel, even when they are alone.
This can lead to an inner peace during difficult times.
But what does it mean to go spiritual in these dark, hard times?
In Islam, spirituality is important as it's about searching oneself in the benevolence of God.
For many Muslim mental patients, seeking Ruqyah treatment is one way to ease a person's burden as a result of mental illness.
Ruqyah is an Islamic therapeutic supplication modality using verses from the Quran and Hadith ofthe Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) for the purpose of healing depression.
When someone close to me was admitted to a psychiatric ward for psychosis and bipolar disorder type 1 recently, I sought the help of Gabungan Perawat-Perawat Muslim Malaysia (GPMM), which sent an ustaz to his home.
What the GPMM practitioner advised the patient surprised us — to continue with conventional treatment at the hospital and to understand that ruqyah is a modality that can invoke calmness in the person's heart and soul.
Based on the saying of Prophet Muhammad, a hadith related by Abu Dawood prescribes that worshippers seek medical treatment, for Allah has not made a disease without making a remedy for it with the exception of old age.
Ruqyah has been in existence for more than 1,400 years, but it has become a norm for many Muslims for treating other illnesses.
GPMM also offers psycho-spiritual treatment as an alternative by way of understanding the state of mind of the patient.
It prescribes certain Quranic verses and zikir for patients to recite daily, besides advising them to empower themselves with prayers.
Although many may question the validity and reliability of ruqyah treatment, I have witnessed the good it has done on the patient concerned.
He's more stable in terms of behaviour and thought and slowly beginning to understand the context of his life.
I wonder if government hospitals could place ruqyah practitioners on their premises.
The practitioners treat others as well, not just Muslims. If traditional Chinese methods are used in certain hospitals, we should give a place for ruqyah practitioners to complement treatments by hospitals.
C'est la vie.
The writer, a former NST journalist, is now a film scriptwriter whose penchant is finding new food haunts in the country