Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with Ecological Systems Theory: Addressing Muslim Mental Health Issues and Wellbeing

Abstract

Muslims across the word underutilize mental health services for addressing their wellbeing andbiopsychosocial, spiritual, and contextual issues. By 2030, the global Muslim population isexpected to reach 2.2 billion people. This indicates that Muslim mental health is gainingimportance and would require contextually (i.e., spiritually, culturally, empirically) moreeffective services. Practitioners used Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) andEcological Systems Theory (EST) to promote wellbeing and address psychopathology for diversegroups. However, rigorous and comprehensive literature from 1986 to 2019 did not produceresearch addressing how ACT could be consumed to serve Muslims. Researchers in Muslimmental health suggested benefitting from EST yet only few have mentioned using ACT. ACT isone of the most effective therapies based on randomized control trials to enhance wellbeing andaddress psychopathology. The main purposes of this paper are to (a) explain how ACT is one ofthe most appropriate counseling approaches to be utilized with Muslims because ACT and Islamhave many commonalities and (b) propose ACT with EST perspective to enable a much morecontextual perspective of ACT so that mental health professionals could promote wellbeing andaddress psychopathology at all ecological levels for all, starting with Muslims. With the arrivalof third and fourth wave of counseling approaches, the use of positive psychology in research andpractice has increased dramatically. ACT, Islam, and EST also highly stress a positive approachperspective thus considering of ACT and EST together might promise more effective researchand practice in positive and abnormal psychology.