Can someone please suggest me a way out of depression and help me to get closer to my religion?
I believe that faith is the most important asset in one's life, I realized that not long ago I went into depression due to a job loss and since that I couldn’t focus on anything including my faith. I try to perform all Wajibaats properly but I feel I lost my connection with my faith. I never used to doubt my faith but from last few months, I’m continuously fighting with myself trying to convince myself not to doubt.
There is someone called Mr. Bilal Muhammad on facebook who may be able to help you. He writes the following:
Abu Zayd al-Balkhi (d. 934) was a scientist who made a distinction between spiritual depression and biological depression. He based his theories on the Quran and Sunna.
While the medical science of his time focused on physical illnesses, al-Balkhi wrote about spiritual, psychological, and mental disorders. He argued for the interplay between physical and mental health -- that bodily illnesses can lead to cognitive problems, and that spiritual illnesses can lead to physical ones.
al-Balkhi wrote about neurosis (chronic distress but without delusions or hallucinations), endogenous depression (originating from within the body), reactive depression (originating from outside the body), and so much that we credit modern psychologists with.
Islam is a religion of faith and actions. While our traditional cultures overemphasize "pray-it-away" solutions to mental health, modern secularism overemphasizes biochemistry. We don't just pray for poverty to go away, we give to charity and we stress personal responsibility and hard work. By the same token, we can't just throw money at the problem of poverty and expect it to disappear -- it may even get worse.
Clinics and hospitals in 2019 are realizing the importance of having chaplains, who are part-in-parcel of the healing process. While medication may lower symptoms and even save lives, there are no "magic pills" -- one's worldview, perspective, and lifestyle will bring equal or greater results.
As a Muslim who has struggled with clinical depression, I personally found much of pop psychology and social media "self-care" posts to be narcissistic, anti-social, hedonistic; and perhaps worst of all, they don't work, and could make the problems worse. Some hip shaykhs even erroneously use this playbook. There aren't many Islamic works on the topic, but as we can see from the example of al-Balkhi, Islam developed a foundation to this science over a millennia ago.
