In 849 AD Abu Zayed al-Balkhi was born in a small village in what is now called Afghanistan and spent a lot of his time researching during the “Golden Age of Islam”.

In the book “Sustenance of the Soul” he separates depression into three different types. Sadness, a normal reaction to life, depression triggered by life events and heritable which were unrelated to external cirumstances. Zayed used a classification system which became popular during the twentieth century. He saw depression not only as a spectrum from sadness to disease but that there was a “reactive” type and an “endogenous” type. The former was treatable with psychotherapy and guidance to a more positive perspective, the latter was not. Zayed also believed that bloodletting, was a brutal treatment. His philosophy was how we view the world is far more important than the world itself. Something that is positive or even neutral can be changed into a totally negative and detrimental experience. Although progressive in his thoughts he was largely ignored and his texts were only recently discovered in the 1970’s which were translated into German and in English in 2014. It was Ibn Sina or “Avicenna” who paved the way after he wrote “Canon of Medicine” which was translated into Arabic to Latin. Zayed’s main focus is on telling the readers that if the soul is afflicted (with psychological pain) the body will lose its natural ability to enjoy pleasure and will find its life becoming distressed and disturbed. This is why it is paramount to ensure that you not not filling a void or validating yourself from external factors. As it states “When the soul is healthy, all its faculties will be tranquil without any psychological symptoms manifesting such as anger, panic, depression and others that we have enumerated. This tranquility of the soul is its healthy condition and that of its safety”. 

Zayed is consistently emphatic regarding the importance and urgency of prioritising mental wellness and seeking treatment as soon as possible. At the end of the day, physical and mental illness affect ibadah and this isn’t something that should be put on the backburner. Although I don't agree with everything written in this book in regards to some of the treatments that were mentioned, I do appreciate his insight in the different illnesses of the soul and the understanding that human beings are unique and therefore require different treatment methods…