The Shifa Institute spreads mental health awareness across college campuses
The Shifa Institute hosts Islamic psychoeducation workshops across community centers and college campuses as students return to school.
At a recent Institute for Muslim Mental Health networking event, Shifa founder Salman Pervez shared how this initiative is creating mental health safe spaces across the state.
“It’s it started at MSU as a school chapter, and then now we’ve branched out into the community… we have chapters starting at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan and University of Detroit Mercy this fall,” he says.
Shifa means healing in Arabic.

Pervez says the group uses creative outlets to introduce students to wellness, “like Golden Age ideas of Islam, like astronomy or art or, or like, engagement with nature and sort of like being in awe of it.”
The workshops usually consist of professional speakers engaging people about mental health related topics in third spaces by “informing people, translating mental health research, and sharing it with college students in a way that’s relatable, applicable to them,” he says.
“We found that that’s very effective in getting students to engage with this sort of work and into the field as well education,” says Pervez.
The group also works with campus Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), which provides free therapy to full-time students.
Pervez says he works with college students to help them become aware of resources and even potentially go into psychology as a field. He says Gen Z is a lot more open to talk about mental health.
“I think it’s overall, it’s really nice that they’re they’re more casual about it, and that they want to do something about it,” he says.
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