Young Muslims often don’t seek mental health support. A report found out why
Thinktank Equi found 44% of Muslim youngsters who had accessed help with mental health might have done so sooner had they felt services understood their faith
A lack of faith-sensitive mental health support is preventing some young people from seeking help and contributing to missed opportunities to intervene before crises, according to a nationwide survey of under-25s.
While the government pledged a £7 million funding boost for youth mental health services in February, a new report by the thinktank Equi has warned that wider failure to recognise the importance of faith-sensitive care for young people could risk “overlooking powerful protective factors” and lead to “missed opportunities of broader, holistic, values-driven and patient-centred care”.
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Authored by researcher Taibah Al-Fagih, the report based its findings on a December 2025 poll of 1,200 young people in the UK aged 16 to 24, and interviews with 32 experts including clinical psychologists, academics, youth workers, faith leaders and policymakers.
More than 40% of the 383 young people in the survey who identified as religious and had sought professional support for poor mental health said they might have done so earlier if they felt services understood their faith background. For Muslim respondents in this situation, a group of 253, the figure was 44%.
“Mainstream provision too often fails to account for this dimension of identity,” the report stated. “Where faith is ignored or misunderstood, we risk creating barriers to access and undermining trust in services that are meant to support those most in need.”
Equi’s findings come as demand for youth mental health services continues to rise, with monthly referrals for children and young people in England having tripled between 2016 and 2024 to almost 120,000 a month, and one in five people aged eight to 25 estimated by NHS England in 2023 to have a probable mental disorder.
Dr Jamilla Hekmoun, chair of the Muslim Mental Health Alliance and author of the Woolf Institute’s Faith in Mental Health report, said: “It’s really important for services to incorporate someone’s faith or spiritual needs.
“Whether their faith is part of their healing or part of why their condition might be worsening, it’s important for practitioners to have that understanding and what it can mean to an individual.”
The Equi report highlighted that four in five young people with faith drew on faith-based, spiritual or reflective practices to cope with stress and mental health challenges, while 67% agreed that acknowledging faith can improve wellbeing support.
However, gaps in what the report describes as “faith literacy” among practitioners risks creating barriers to access, particularly for young Muslims, who are among the least likely to complete NHS talking therapies. According to the report, just 2.6% of Muslims completed their NHS talking therapies in 2021-22, the lowest completion rates compared to other faith groups, including 18.4% of Christian patients and 38.9% of those reporting no religion.
Hekmoun told Hyphen that a lack of understanding can lead to people disengaging from crucial services.
“It can make people not want to engage… and it can worsen their mental health,” she said, adding that while stigma around mental health still exists, barriers to accessing support are now a bigger issue.
“If you’d asked me 10 years ago, when I first started out: ‘what’s the biggest issue with Muslim mental health?’ I would say stigma and taboo within the community,” she said. “If you ask me now, it’s more accessibility in terms of services… and the lack of understanding of religion from mental health professionals.”
The report also pointed to wider issues limiting access to mental health services, including socioeconomic inequality, the cost of living crisis and experiences of discrimination, which can impact both mental health and willingness to seek support.
Additionally, more than a third of young people who experienced poor mental health said they did not seek professional help at all, with many only accessing support once they had reached crisis point.
For some young Muslims, faith communities are already filling that gap. Equi found that Muslim-led charities and grassroots initiatives like the Muslim Youth Helpline and Inspirited Minds are providing early intervention, culturally sensitive counselling and peer support, reaching people who might otherwise not engage with statutory services.
Six Muslim-led mental health charities cited as case studies by Equi have collectively supported at least 224,000 people and saved the NHS an estimated £95 million, according to the report.
Hekmoun said there is still stigma around certain aspects of mental health, including medication but added that faith-based and medical approaches should not be seen as separate.
“A lot of practitioners or individuals often propose one or the other — it’s either the religious approach or the medical approach. There is no reason why the two can’t coexist,” she said.
Hekmoun also warned that wider social pressures, including rising Islamophobia, may be making it harder for some young people to seek support.
The report made a series of recommendations, including embedding faith literacy in national mental health strategies, improving training for practitioners and increasing partnerships between the NHS and trusted community organisations.
