Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with Ecological Systems Theory: Addressing Muslim Mental Health Issues and Wellbeing
Journal Title: Journal of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing - Year 2019, Vol 3, Issue 2
Abstract
Muslims across the word underutilize mental health services for addressing their wellbeing and biopsychosocial, spiritual, and contextual issues. By 2030, the global Muslim population is expected to reach 2.2 billion people. This indicates that Muslim mental health is gaining importance and would require contextually (i.e., spiritually, culturally, empirically) more effective services. Practitioners used Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Ecological Systems Theory (EST) to promote wellbeing and address psychopathology for diverse groups. However, rigorous and comprehensive literature from 1986 to 2019 did not produce research addressing how ACT could be consumed to serve Muslims. Researchers in Muslim mental health have suggested benefitting from EST yet only few have mentioned using ACT. ACT is one of the most effective therapies based on randomized control trials to enhance wellbeing and address psychopathology. The main purposes of this paper are to (a) explain how ACT is one of the most appropriate counseling approaches to be utilized with Muslims because ACT and Islam have many commonalities and (b) propose ACT with EST perspective to enable a much more contextual perspective of ACT so that mental health professionals could promote wellbeing and address psychopathology at all ecological levels for all, starting with Muslims. With the arrival of third and fourth wave of counseling approaches, the use of positive psychology in research and practice has increased dramatically. ACT, Islam, and EST also highly stress a positive approach perspective thus considering of ACT and EST together might promise more effective research and practice in positive and abnormal psychology.
Authors and Affiliations
Ahmet Tanhan
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP663141
- DOI -
- Views 112
- Downloads 0
Development and Validation of the Japanese version of the Savoring Beliefs Inventory (SBI-J)
Savoring is defined as people’s capacity to attend to positive experiences and to regulate positive feelings in response to positive events. The purpose of this study was to develop a Japanese adaptation of the Savoring...
What Pre-school Children Think about Happiness, Hope, Gratitude, Wisdom, Justice, and Optimism? The Positive Conceptual Thinking Development Study
The purpose of this research was to explore how pre-school children define and understand positive psychology concepts such as happiness, wisdom, hope, justice, gratitude, and optimism. The research included 100 children...
Differences in Character Strengths Levels and Associations with Positive Outcomes Across Contexts
Using character strengths is associated with optimal functioning, psychological fulfilment, and wellbeing in general. While Peterson and Seligman (2004) assumed that character strength use may vary across specific contex...
Self-Regulation Mechanisms Explain How Dispositional Mindfulness Promotes Well-Being
Most empirical studies of mindfulness have focused on the relation between mindfulness and decreased maladaptive outcomes (e.g. depression, anxiety, somatization disorders), and relatively fewer have examined the mechani...
Types of Subjective Well-Being and Their Associations with Relationship Outcomes
The authors examined the associations between three facets of subjective well-being (SWB; positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction) and relationship outcomes, employing multilevel models to analyze data fr...