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Utilizing trauma-informed care to better understand and combat Islamophobia
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On June 6, 2021, four members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario, were murdered in a senseless act of terrorism, bringing home the deadly nature of anti-Muslim sentiment in Canada. Previously, in 2017, there was a massacre at a mosque in Québec in which six Muslim worshipers were slain. After the London attack, many people expressed their sorrow and urged for an investigation of the discriminatory systems and institutions that foster Islamophobia. Canada’s medical community needs greater direction on how to deal with the effects of Islamophobia on patients, on top of the growing number of requests to address the negative effects of all types of racism.
Utilizing trauma-informed care to better understand and combat Islamophobia
Muslims make up the country’s second-largest religious group, and their communities are as varied as the individuals who practise Islam. To be more precise, Islamophobia is “a unique concept relating to xenophobia and bigotry against Muslims or people believed to be Muslim.” Critics have said that the word is being used to euphemize the problem of anti-Muslim bigotry and prejudice in recent years. Islamophobia is the more popular word in the medical literature, so we’ll stick with it.
There are a wide variety of manifestations of Islamophobia at the personal, social, and institutional levels. In North America, there is an alarming rise in the number of violent crimes committed against Muslims. Moreover, anti-Muslim bias has been codified in policy and law, which has led to an increase in the frequency of microaggressions, limitations on travel, and hate crimes, the latter of which have more than quadrupled in the previous decade. Even beyond the immediate victims and their families, communities as a whole might feel the effects of Islamophobic hate crimes via the widespread feelings of terror, heightened awareness, and loss that they engender.
There is mounting evidence linking Islamophobia to negative outcomes in physical and mental health. Further, research seems that intersectional forms of oppression amplify negative effects, as Black Muslims and visibly Muslim women face disproportionately higher rates of Islamophobic violence and discrimination. A qualitative research conducted in southern Ontario following the Québec mosque massacre uncovered themes of anxiety, hypervigilance, and identity problems among Muslim youngsters who were the focus of anti-Muslim prejudice. Muslims are more likely to avoid getting medical treatment and have less confident in the medical establishment as a whole when Islamophobia is present in the community. As a result, the medical community has to take into account the one-of-a-kind characteristics of Islamophobia and the potential long-term damage that may result from encounters between Muslim patients and healthcare providers.
In order to combat Islamophobia, we must first recognise the ways in which it may emerge as actual trauma. The trauma-informed care model is supposed to be an all-encompassing framework that incorporates not only individual points of treatment, but also clinics, hospitals, and larger systems of care. We utilise this paradigm to propose a strategy for face-to-face interactions between healthcare providers and patients.
The first thing doctors and nurses can do is make people feel safer. The clinician’s personal prejudices and possibly discriminatory attitudes or behaviours are emphasised in the existing research on cultural safety. In particular, medical professionals should be aware of the effects of Islamophobia and examine any implicit biases they may have against Muslims. If a clinician has a significant knowledge gap or a prejudiced view of Muslims, he or she should seek out reliable sources to bridge the gap and prevent potentially harmful interactions with patients. A doctor asking a Muslim woman, who has given no indication that she has been subjected to such treatment, if her male relatives are forcing her to wear a head covering is an example of an interaction that might cause trauma. Another example is a doctor justifying patient violence by saying that the patient’s religious beliefs compelled him to act violently. The stereotypes of Muslim women as subservient and Muslim men as dominant contribute to these kinds of generalisations. Care providers may potentially endanger patients’ cultural safety by making assumptions about their patients, such as presuming that a Muslim patient is a recent immigrant to Canada or being unable to accommodate patients’ religious habits (such as fasting or ritualised prayer) in medical settings. Assumptions and actions like these, which might suggest to the patient that they are not safe from discrimination in what is supposed to be a therapeutic interaction, typically stem from implicit, explicit, and structural prejudices towards Muslims.
Next, doctors should look for chances to affirm and accept the possibility that Islamophobia affects treatment. Concern about upsetting the patient or a lack of expertise about how to help the patient are two reasons why clinicians could be reluctant to bring up sensitive subjects like Islamophobia. Clinicians should be mindful, however, that choosing silence on these topics throughout the course of a long-term relationship with a patient may not be seen as a neutral option by the patient, but rather as dismissive or lacking sympathy. Distressing as it may be, the inability to recall or discuss past events may be frustrating. Every doctor-patient relationship is different, therefore it’s up to the doctor to decide when and how to bring up these concerns.
The patient might be checked in on in a judgment-free manner using verbal or nonverbal signals that support their identity as part of trauma-informed treatment, especially in the wake of high-profile hate crimes. Additionally, health care providers, with their patients’ consent, should make continual efforts to learn about and appreciate the significance of spirituality and cultural norms in their patients’ lives. Clinicians should listen carefully and affirm the patient’s feelings when they choose to share their experiences, taking care not to show doubt about the validity of the patient’s experiences, dismiss their worries, or take a defensive stance.
As a third point, it’s important for health care providers to learn more about the local spiritual, cultural, and racial resources available to their patients. Some patients may benefit from receiving trauma-informed treatment by connecting with others who can relate to their experiences. Educated on local groups that give this kind of assistance to Muslim patients, clinicians should ask whether their patients would be interested in using them (while being aware that not all Muslim-identifying patients seek out spiritually or culturally congruent organisations or care providers).
Health practitioners have a responsibility to combat Islamophobia, which has been shown to have negative effects on patients’ emotional and physical well-being. Clinicians may be able to give more effective and therapeutic treatment to their Muslim patients if they adopt a trauma-informed perspective in order to reduce the danger of retraumatization and isolation.
Summary
Islamophobia is “a unique concept relating to xenophobia and bigotry against Muslims or people believed to be Muslim”. There is an alarming rise in the number of violent crimes committed against Muslims. Canada’s medical community needs greater direction on how to deal with the effects of Islamophobia on patients. There is mounting evidence linking Islamophobia to negative outcomes in physical and mental health. Muslims are more likely to avoid getting medical treatment and have less confidence in the medical establishment when Islamophobia is present.
The trauma-informed care model is supposed to be an all-encompassing framework that incorporates clinics, hospitals, and larger systems of care. Clinicians should be aware of the effects of Islamophobia and examine any implicit biases they may have against Muslims. Care providers may potentially endanger patients’ cultural safety by making assumptions about their patients. Assumptions and actions like these stem from implicit, explicit, and structural prejudices towards Muslims. Clinicians have a responsibility to combat Islamophobia, which has been shown to have negative effects on patients’ emotional and physical well-being. Clinicians may be able to give more effective and therapeutic treatment to their Muslim patients if they adopt a trauma-informed perspective.
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