Bismillah Institute helps teens with Teen Talk

Hello, my name is Vjolca.

Last year I was asked to speak to a group of teen girls about my experience as a Muslim mental health professional. As a mother, I know pre-teen girls can be hard to reach and not particularly excited to hear from a grown-up (boring!) … Far from bored though, the students were engaged, and the talk went great! Afterward, I was surprised by the number of teens who came up and asked discreetly if I could be their therapist.

I related so much to these young women, many were children of immigrants like me. They were lonely, isolated, and trying to navigate a world that is very different from their parents’ experience. Imagine the looming threat of climate change, experiencing lockdowns and fears from the COVID-19 pandemic, and balancing media cycles online, this generation is suffering from a collective mental health crisis we have never seen in our lifetimes.

I work full-time with my own private practice, but I wanted to help them all!

Besides wanting to help them because I related to their experiences, as a mental health professional, alarm bells were ringing in my head Having seen recent data* that Orlando is a hotspot** for human trafficking I knew I had to, and COULD, do something.

How to start? In Surah Al-Zhariyaat, 99:7, Allah says “Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it.” What contribution can I make, even if, like a drop in the ocean, it is an “atom’s weight” of good? Bismillah Institute’s Teen Talk was born.

That next week, I recruited a superhero team of clinicians that were savvy enough to relate to teens but brought with them professional skills and life experience to help young people navigate their up-ended world. The following month we began seeing our first patients.

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Things are going well! Since 2022, the need has grown exponentially. From the initial five teens, we now help 75 teens and 25 families each month. The Bismillah Institute model works!

We see people of all faiths, cultures, and walks of life with a special focus on reaching Muslim teens and their families. Our combination of mental health services + social work + religious support is the first of its kind for Muslim teens in Central Florida. Since we began, we have helped nearly 400 teens and their families (of many faiths, not just Muslims) with their personal struggles and to grow together in a more stable, loving way.

The teens and families we have helped through Bismillah have come back from the brink of desperation, hopelessness, divorce, and debilitating mental illness (to name a few!). Bismillah Institute’s approach works because we are uniquely trusted in the community because of three factors:

(1) grounded in spiritual / religious care

(2) deep, unwavering commitment to HIPAA privacy

(3) access to additional services via social worker support

Having a social worker on staff means that if a teen or their family members come to us with a problem outside of traditional mental health therapy, we find the resources that will help them help themselves. Because of our multicultural team of professionals, we can successfully navigate all of these things – mental health, confidentiality, and social services – across very different cultural backgrounds and languages (Bismillah Institute currently serves patients in six languages: English, Urdu, Hindi, Spanish, German, Arabic and soon, Tagalog).

We have helped teens sort through issues like anxiety, depression, peer pressure, Attention Deficit Disorders, Learning Disabilities, and social anxiety. In many cases, from these initial visits with just the teens, their families joined. They saw the good it was doing for their daughters and came to us with their challenges, so we hired a social worker. When they struggled with their faith, we hired a Chaplain. And when their families were too stressed to meal plan, we hired a dietitian focused on using food as medicine for our teens and their families.

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The need is urgent. Word travels fast. Because of the success we have had in helping teens and their families, we have 60+ people contact us every week. Because of the limited staff, for every 1 teen we take in, we have to turn 9 away. Not only does that mean dozens of teens we cannot serve but their families as well – potentially hundreds of people who look to a trusted, capable guide in their community that speaks their language and understands their experience.

In 2023, we hope to expand Bismillah’s free and reduced mental health services for teens. We have a model in place that works. We have professionals eager to help. We need the support of community members giving anything they can to make sure we do not have to make anyone wait when they are ready to seek help. Raising $2,500 will allow us to hire another mental health professional and accept teens we previously had to turn away.

“None of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself” [Sahih Al Bani 7384]

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Perfect storm? Teen mental health crisis + aggressive human trafficking activity

* Teen mental health crisis: A CDC report found that teen girls who feel persistently sad and hopeless grew by 60% between 2011-2021.

** Human trafficking: Orlando is the 3rd ranking US City per capita in the volume of calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.