Dreams keep brain refreshed

Tsai et al. Cerebral capillary blood flow upsurge during REM sleep is mediated by A2a receptors. Cell Reports, August 2021

New research has provided some fresh insights into why dreams are biologically so important. Scientists showed that capillary blood flow within the brain increases significantly while dreaming, which enhances neural waste removal and delivers more oxygen and nutrients.

The purpose of dreaming has always been very controversial. Dreams are typically composed of illogical scenarios, and they can be scary, cathartic, and sometimes even funny. Modern medicine has provided a great deal of evidence that sleeping helps the brain to reset, recharge, and process newly formed memories. But what about dreams? Dreams predominantly occur during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase of sleep. To explore the specific biological processes during REM sleep, researchers in this study used a groundbreaking new technique that allowed them to watch in real-time the flow of blood throughout the brains of mice as they passed through the various stages of sleep. They specifically used a dye to make blood vessels in the brain visible under fluorescent light and imaged them live through a technique called “two-photon microscopy.” Using this approach they were able to directly observe red blood cells in capillaries of the cortex in non-anesthetized mice. Long hours of imaging sessions revealed the massive flow of red blood cells through brain capillaries, specifically during REM sleep, but not during other sleep states. Interestingly, when researchers woke up the mice during REM a stronger rebound REM with increased blood flow was followed as soon as mice fell back asleep. This suggests that the brain makes up for the lost time by increasing blood flow to facilitate brain refreshment. Reductions in neurovascular blood flow and lack of REM sleep are associated with dementia and Alzheimer’s onset. Further evidence suggests that dementia is linked with the buildup of neural waste and toxic proteins in the brain. These findings imply that high quality REM sleep and dreams are likely the key for keeping the mind sharp well into old ages.

The mathematics behind the geometry of an egg

Narushin et al. Egg and math: introducing a universal formula for egg shape. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, August 2021.

Eggs have always been considered a major food source in human history. They also have one of the most distinguished shapes in nature that can adapt to the most diverse environmental conditions including extreme heat, humidity, incubation with or without body heat, in or out of nests, and from very clean to highly infectious environments. Moreover, an egg has a remarkable shape that is large enough to grow an animal embryo inside, small enough to exit the body of 10,500 living bird species, not roll away once laid, and be structurally resilient enough to carry disproportional weight. Despite many efforts, a universal mathematical formula that define the shape of an egg with an equation has not been found until now. The shape of an egg is comprised of four geometric figures: sphere, ellipsoid, ovoid, and pyriform (also known as pear-shaped). The first three are clearly defined in mathematics but a formula for the pyriform profile had not been developed until now. To resolve this major problem researchers first developed a formula describing only the shape of a pear and then combined it with the current formula. The new universal formula for egg shape is now based on four parameters: egg length, maximum breadth, shift of the vertical axis, and the diameter at one quarter of the egg length. The generation of this new formula allows scientists to better understand not only what the egg itself looks like, but also how and why it was formed. Discovering the universal equation for such a sturdy, aerodynamic, and ultra-efficiently designed bio-structure is not only important to biology, but also to many other different fields ranging from the food industry to architectural engineering, agriculture, aeronautics, and even art.

Blue Foods: The key ingredient for ending world hunger in a sustainable future

Gephart et al. Environmental performance of blue foods. Nature, September 2021.
Short et al. Harnessing the diversity of small-scale actors is key to the future of aquatic food systems. Nature Food, September 2021.
Tigchelaar et al. Compound climate risks threaten aquatic food system benefits. Nature Food, September 2021.

A comprehensive evaluation of the aquatic foods sector by multiple studies has uncovered how fisheries and aquaculture can provide a healthy and sustainable diet with fair and resilient food systems around the world. Our current food systems are extremely fragile and even worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have been constantly weakened by outdated supply chains and become vulnerable to climate change. How can we protect the planet while producing sufficient and healthy food to nourish our growing population in these aggravating conditions? Searching for solutions, researchers decided to analyze data from hundreds of studies on a wide range of seafood (also named as blue food) species. Their findings demonstrate that blue foods rank higher than land animal source foods in terms of their nutritional benefits and potential for sustainability advantages. For example, compared to chickens, trouts have approximately 19 times more omega-3 fatty acids; oysters and mussels have 76 times more vitamin B-12 and five times more iron; and carps have nine times more calcium. But how can we increase the production and consumption of blue foods? The projected global demand for blue food will double by 2050. The existing gap could be primarily filled by increased aquaculture rather than by capture fisheries. Investing in innovation and improving aquacultures can potentially make blue foods cheaper to the consumer and generate a shift away from land-based foods like chicken, beef, and diary. Moreover, the major blue food species produced commercially in aquaculture, such as tilapia, salmon, catfish and carp, have environmental footprints comparable to chicken, the lowest-impact land animal meat. Blue food systems seem to be our best option to combat malnutrition, lower the environmental footprint of the food system, and provide livelihoods. Aquatic foods have been typically neglected by researchers and policymakers. Maybe it’s time to recognize and prioritize them.

Being trouble-free is the biggest trouble of all. I’d rather wish people felt so troubled for others that their hearts felt burning in embers, rather than being trouble-free. Troubled as to why people are in so miserable condition because they do not believe, because they choose to stray from the straight path, because they are so rude and aggressive.

This does not mean believers should artificially subject themselves to different conditions of suffering. On the contrary, we are referring here to the suffering of a believer’s heart which stems from strength of faith, immensity of spirit, and magnanimity of conscience; a heart that is open to the entirety of humanity. The suffering I am mentioning is not one caused by worldly losses and distress; it is a suffering that comes out of a life lived in the shade of the heart and immensity of the spirit.

It is not possible to have such suffering by merely saying “let me be a suffering person now…” This is not a goal one should choose to reach only for its sake. On the contrary, it depends on having belief and occurs as a natural result of faith. It is related to grasping the significance of what the next world means for us. A person who has a strong connection with God and has attained certainty of faith cherishes such compassion for the entire creation that even seeing an ant fall into water and struggling to survive will tug at such a person’s heartstrings. In response to an insect crushed under his foot, the person feels pain as if it were himself being crushed. If a true believer’s feeling of compassion is so developed even towards animals, imagine how much grief such a person would feel for people being thrown to Hell.

This level of compassion is very difficult for those with weak faith, whose connection with God is virtually a thin line and who do not have much to do with a proper religious life. Can such people not be saved? They can be saved of course; God can take anybody to Paradise, even those whose faith is only by imitation, who does not feel concerned for others. This is another thing. But what we are talking about here is being a perfected universal human (insan al-kamil), attaining true faith by verification, and the fact that this is the actual way to feel due suffering. In short, a concern in this sense is an outcome of having wholehearted faith in God; it is the result of a sincere stance.

Sometimes suffering may come as a sort of pleasure for people of a certain level of spiritual progress; the person takes spiritual delight from that very suffering. However, a believer’s course of life should not depend on taking such delight. Nursi mentions the concepts of spiritual journeying in the following order: faith in God; knowledge of God; love for God; and spiritual delight. At first glance to this order, one can be misled as if spiritual delight is the ultimate target. However, even if a spiritual journeyer feels a spiritual delight with their outward and inward senses after a certain level of progress, the person should not seek to feel such delight through their worship or suffering. We need to act with the consciousness that faith, worship, knowledge of God, and loving Him are God’s rights over us and a duty on our part. Therefore, we should never make these conditional to any material or spiritual gain since this might mean daring to take an attitude of claiming rights against God. This is a sensitive issue that calls for much care. What made the Prophet’s Companions endeavor on God’s path in a tireless fashion was this very concern and suffering of theirs. It was their consideration of glorifying the name of God. Since Abu Ayyub al-Ansari knew that having no suffering and concern is a type of death in one sense, he had traveled as far as the vicinity of Istanbul despite his old age. Others as well got themselves tied to their horses and set forth thus because they did not know anything more important than letting God’s name be heard all over the world. This was what they had learned from the Messenger of God. They wished to continue until the end of their lives the understanding and philosophy they had inherited from him. They understood very well that the hardships, troubles, and suffering they would forbear on this path would return to them very differently as great rewards. They believed so soundly and grasped the truth of the matter so quickly. They had sound insight to the truth underlying the message of the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Tradition. They spent a lifetime with love and yearning for God, with a heart open to the realms beyond.

We also read the Qur’an, reflect on books, and we listen to sermons. However, we are not able to reach their level of these pioneers in any way. Had they seen our libraries, they would probably find it ridiculous and say, “Why do you need so much grandiloquence for knowing God?” They had very sound belief. Thanks to that sound belief, they had overcome matters you could not settle by means of referring to heaps of books. It is not possible to find in any other era of world history such a community of people who progressed from sheer ignorance to such a scholarly level and profound spiritual knowledge. After taking their place behind the Pride of Humanity, they found their true identity, they sensed their own truth, and they read their own selves correctly. With regard to knowledge of and love for God, they made a dramatic progress. They saw the realms beyond clearly and did their best in order to attain those wonders and to let other people attain them. Since we are not able to live even one tenth of the life they led, we cannot feel the same concern, suffering, and spiritual delight they did.

Unfortunately, we have much of empty talk and attitude of a know-it-all. We are matchless at paying lip service; there is no one we cannot persuade with demagogy. However, most of the time we are telling about ourselves. Had the Companions of the Prophet seen our situation, they would be surprised at our extensive talk and wonder why we engaged in so much useless talk. They would probably put it simply as, “God is sufficient; all the rest are transient” and astonish at our situation. If we are to compare our situation to theirs we can say that we are the unfortunate people of the lowest level and they were the distinguished people of the highest level.

I have much hope in Divine mercy and live with the hope that even a person like myself will enter Paradise. Given that I cherish such a hope about myself, I easily think the same way about others and say, “According to the nature of people’s deeds, Paradise has eight different gates; if we cannot enter from one maybe we can enter from another.” However, I am not quite sure whether they take us there with our present condition.

We have no right to revile any other people. Everybody must question their own condition: “How many times in my life I prostrated myself at night and cried for the troubles of other believers for an hour? Am I making any efforts for the sake of letting people meet faith?” Everybody can practice such self-questioning and weigh the degree of their share from true humanity. I am not making any exaggerations. Perfection of a person’s faith is to the degree of their compassion to the creation. The degree of a person’s profundity at this type of determination, resolution, endeavor, excitement, and letting people know the Messenger of God correctly reflects the profundity of their being human. When saintly people with deep insight look at you, they evaluate you from this perspective. No matter how you present yourself, no matter what achievements you make, and no matter how many schools you open, the actual factor that determines your true worth is your faith and your relationship with God, as well as your resulting feelings of compassion, suffering, concern, and caring excitements about the creation. The Qur’an relates the suffering of God’s Messenger about his people as, “Yet, it may be that you will torment yourself to death with grief, following after them, if they do not believe in this Message” (Kahf 18:6). Likewise, the noble Prophet stated that (the weight of responsibility expressed by) chapter Hud made his hair turn gray (Tirmidhi, Tafsiru’s Surah, 56 (6). Considering the dramatic flourishing that occurred during the Time of Bliss, the underlying reason was first of all the Messenger of God and then his Companions in his footsteps, with their due concern, suffering, and correct practice of the faith.

It is for this reason that a person’s degree of relation with God, of faith, knowledge of God, and enthusiasm for conveying lofty truths to humanity is the determining factor for the degree of the impact and flourishing that person will effect. Ultimately, the matter relates to having perfected faith, complete sincerity, pure certainty of belief, depth of knowledge and love of God, and having genuine enthusiasm. If you can be deepened in these aspects, the waves you will effect will be in the same scale and reach four corners of the world.

Between the ages of six and ten, I stayed up every night waiting for the sound of my parents closing their bedroom door. Then I stayed up for an extra 20-30 minutes to make sure it didn’t reopen. I was convinced that they planned to leave me in the middle of the night, driven mad by my autistic brother, Matthew.

My parents did not abandon me, and Matthew remained with us for two more years before moving into a group home. A typical day during those 12 years started off with a 4-am wake up call, followed by one parent escorting my brother and me to the car for our morning drive. Matthew begged for food he would eventually just toss in the garbage, screaming “McDonald’s” or “Jack-in-the-Box” as we made our way down the still-dark streets of suburbia. Breakfast Jacks and hash browns made up about 50% of my diet during those years, while Matt was partial to chicken nuggets drenched in Italian dressing.

After he was fed, dressed, and cleaned up, my mom and I would harness him onto the school bus and send him on his way. About every other day my mom received a phone call while he was at school, explaining how he had soiled his clothes, self-injured, or bitten a staff member (they learned not to call unless he broke the skin). After school I was shuttled off to sports practice via a carpool for which my parents never drove. I fell in love with school and sports not necessarily for the academics or the athletics, but for the hours of relative silence and calm they were able to provide. I showed up early to appointments and stayed late, anything to spend time out of the house. When I arrived home after practice, my whole family sat down for dinner at the table together, a ritual my parents gathered us for, every day, without fail. Whether it lasted five seconds or 20 minutes didn’t matter; it was the only sense of normalcy we were able to achieve.

Homework was completed between guarding the food in the cupboards and rewinding Matt’s VCR tapes. Sometimes I was instructed to chase him around our tiny yard, my parents praying that physical activity would keep him silent for the night. At bedtime, his medications either drugged him into slumber or he was awake for the night, soiling his bed sheets or leaping from his window into the front yard. Before we had a lock on his room, he would creep down the hall, waiting for my father to shout “Back to bed!” and he would scurry back into his room as if it were a game.

Those 12 years of my life were characterized by Matt’s creaky outdoor swing set, thrice daily handfuls of pills, a constant parade of respite workers, padlocks on our fridge, trapeze bars hanging from the living room ceiling, and “Aladdin” playing on the VCR for ten hours a day. My family has been kicked out of restaurants, parks, and public pools; the stigma of autism following us like a dark cloud. To call our life chaos for those 12 years would be an understatement. The usual benefits of a sibling (shared chores, free advice, companionship) were lost. I was a pseudo-only child, shipped from one activity to the next while my parents were suspended in a sense of panic, wondering what injuries he would inflict on himself or whether he would be kicked out of another school. I love my brother so much, and one of the things that reminds me to be grateful is that all of the superficial things I missed out on due to his disability pale in comparison to the normal life he lost, and to the partial loss of a son my parents have already experienced.

I remember very clearly the last day Matthew lived with us, though I was unaware of its significance at the time. The soccer carpool had just dropped me off at home. Already physically drained, I was standing in the garage going through my usual mental preparation to enter the hellfire that would surely greet me inside. I was met instead with silence, my ears ringing from the anticipated noise. I found my dad in the kitchen; for the first time I realized how much older he looked than 40. “Where’s Matt?”  I asked. Always the first question asked by anyone who walked into the house. “He’s staying away for a while. To work on his medications.” A while turned into five months at the adolescent psych hospital, where large men guarded every door and Matt sat next to anorexic girls at meal times (and stole their food). Five long months. Relief at home soon turned to confusion. My parents and I didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Even the dog had lost his daily job of chasing Matt onto the school bus. They kept me in the dark about his transition into a group home, sending me off to school and sports practices as if nothing had changed. I continued bringing home straight A report cards to tack onto the fridge, to remind them that they could still be hopeful about one of their children. Matthew has been in a group home since he left the psych hospital. He has not spent a night in his own home in ten years.  

My parents have given me everything I need to succeed on my own, but even they will admit they have not been able to give me the attention they otherwise would have had my brother turned out “normal.” I resented this when I was younger, telling myself Matthew was faking his autism to get more attention. As I grew, I used this lack of attention to fuel early maturity and independence. I pushed my parents to let me travel, to send me to a brand new state for college, to not worry about me when they already had ten lifetimes of worry under their belts.

When I first settled in these new places such as college and medical school, I often struggled with how to explain my brother’s situation to new people. I hated getting pity from them, but I did not want to brush over Matthew like he hasn’t had a huge impact on my life. For a while when asked about my siblings, I would mention that I had a brother and leave it at that. No, he does not go to college, yes, he lives in California, yes, we get along.

Now I tell them everything, because there is nothing shameful or uncomfortable about him. I have an autistic brother. He lives in a group home with three other young men and an incredible staff. He likes “green chips” with Italian dressing. My parents visit him every week and they are in a constant battle to find the perfect balance of medications for him. I came to medical school to meet neurologists specializing in the care of autistic teens and adults. Yes, we get along.   

For four years I volunteered with a day program that serves autistic children and adolescents. It was the same program at which, five years earlier, my brother had been one of the first members. Pictures of him as a teen are still in frames around the house, and he is famous among the original staff members. “Oh, Matthew,” they would tell me, “He was wild. I loved that kid.” I loved the work and miss it dearly, but there was something incredibly frustrating about working with high-functioning kids on the complete opposite end of the autism spectrum from Matthew. These kids could talk, could engage, could make jokes with me. They had behaviors but they were manageable. I wondered how it was possible for them to wear the same diagnostic label as Matthew. Matthew, the boy who thinks he is still 14-years old, who cannot sit still for more than five minutes, who defecates in closets and smashes televisions against the walls. Matthew, who kicks dogs and bites humans. Matthew, who occasionally forgets who I am.

People say there is nothing worse for a parent than burying their own child. I think my parents are more afraid of Matthew outliving them. They sat me down when I graduated from high school to explain the significance of having a brother like Matthew. Someday my responsibilities for him may increase exponentially, and I need to be prepared for that. He will never not be my responsibility. Sometimes I feel like I am the insurance policy on my brother’s wellbeing, the one person my parents can fully and completely trust, the daughter they have vetted to be obedient and to work hard and to do it all for her brother. Someday I could be the only family Matt has left who knows him well enough to take care of him, to prevent others from taking advantage of him, and to give him the most fulfilling life possible as an adult with severe autism.

I will forever be a part of the autism community, but this membership has not been cheap. I’ve been challenged in ways that have forever changed me and how I perceive the world. I found strength in my family and in my education, both as a learner and a teacher. I can only hope that by sharing my Matthew story I will be able to connect, deeply, with others who may be feeling the same confusion, frustration, and joy that I have felt for the past 24 years.

A day thinking about what could happen, should happen, or what might have been is a day missed. #mindfulmoments
@Headspace

Think of the present hour; your power of patient endurance is enough for this hour. Mobilize all your strength for [it], and think of divine mercy, reward in the hereafter, and how your brief and transient life is being transformed into a long and eternal form.
Said Nursi

Is it not surprising how a 2020 @Headpsace tweet on carpe diem and a 20^th century Islamic scholar’s quote correspondingly focus on the present? Furthermore, both Headspace and Said Nursi stress the importance of moment-to-moment mindful attention, a part of mindfulness-based mental health intervention which is highly effective for anxiety. As a Muslim counselor in training, I have noticed correlations between certain Islamic practices and values advised in the the Quran and the Prophetic tradition, the Western Psychological Theory of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) inspired by Chinese spiritual practices. These correlations suggest that utilizing spiritually integrative approaches in therapy can provide fruitful therapeutic results with Muslim clients.

Though research on Islamic Psychotherapy and incorporating Islamic principles into Western Psychotherapy to better counsel Muslim clients has grown over the past years, there is very little focus on counseling Muslim adolescents. Expanding the counseling literature to include interventions that focus specifically on Muslim adolescents’ mental health can help counselors increase their awareness, knowledge, and competence to better support this population. This article explores the existing literature on Muslim adolescents and mental health counseling and highlights the use of psychoeducation when using innovative and integrative therapeutic practices to help Muslim youth cope with mental health issues.

A High-Risk Group for Mental Health Issues: Muslim-American Adolescents

According to the Pew Research Center (2020), the 3.45 million Muslims living in the United States make up about 1.1% of the population. Almost half of Muslims (48%) have experienced discrimination during the past year; this number used to be 43% in 2011, and 40% in 2007 (“U.S. Muslims Concerned”). Following the 2016 Presidential Election, Council on American-Islamic Relations reported hate crimes in the U.S. rising 91% in the first half of 2017 compared to 2016 (APA, 2020).  FBI’s (2020) “2019 Hate Crime Statistics Report” indicates that 13.2% of hate crime victims were of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias. As these statistics demonstrate, factors such as discrimination, bullying, profiling, Islamophobia, and hostility that Muslims face put them at risk for mental health problems. Muslims in the United States most commonly face depression and anxiety along with other psychological troubles (Herzig, 2016, p. 14).

One-third of Muslim-Americans in the U.S. are under the age of 30, making them the youngest faith group in the country (APA, 2020). Research alarmingly shows that challenges in integration, vulnerability to Islamophobia, and religious discrimination put Muslim youth at an even higher risk for mental distress (Samari, 2016, p. 1922). 42% of Muslim students in K-12 schools are victims of faith-based bullying and “the younger the age of exposure to harassment, the greater the likelihood of developing depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic distress” (APA, 2020). Acculturative stress leads to cases of withdrawal, anxiety, and depression among Muslim adolescents, affecting girls more specifically (Goforth et al., 2016, p. 205). A group of young adult American-born Muslims were asked about whether they perceived presence of anxiety in peers, to which 64% replied yes. However, only 20% had knowledge of their peers seeking treatment, most probably due to stigma around receiving mental health care (Herzig, 2016, p. 33). Nevertheless, researchers have found that though stigma negatively impacts active coping in Muslim-American youth, religious coping is positively correlated with active coping strategies. As such, they argue that effectively working with Muslim-Americans require counselors to maintain “religion as a central consideration in the counseling process to promote recovery” (p. 34). Despite such a clear picture of an adolescent group at risk for mental health issues and guidelines on how professionals can help them, very little research has been conducted on bringing religion and spirituality into counseling when working with Muslim-American youth.

CBT and Mindfulness from an Islamic Perspective

Cognitive Behavior Therapy is one of the most clinically proven and effective therapeutic models in treating different psychological conditions, most specifically stress and anxiety. Belonging to the third wave of CBT, mindfulness-based therapy is also a promising intervention for treating anxiety and mood problems in clinical populations (Hoffman et al., 2010). Research on using CBT with adolescents is not scarce, compared to the very few works published specifically on how MBCT can be used with the same population Shorey et al. (2015), conducted a study on the relation between moment-to-moment mindful attention and anxiety among young adults in substance use treatment. Moment-to-moment attention, one facet of mindfulness, is defined as “sustaining attention to what occurs in the present moment of daily life (p. 374). They found that moment-to-moment mindful attention was affected by panic and generalized anxiety (p. 376).  As a result, the authors suggest moment-to-moment mindfulness practices with clients who cope with such problems.

One area of knowledge missing from Western Psychotherapy curriculum and practice is the Islamic tradition of Cognitive Restructuring (Islamic cognitive behavior therapy) which predates Albert Ellis (1962) and Aaron Beck (1976). Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn Sahl Balkhi (al Balkhi) was a ninth century psychologist, who was the first to suggest cognitive approaches for anxiety and mood disorders, focusing on “how to eliminate emotional disorders by simply concentrating on changing one’s inner thinking and irrational beliefs” and using therapeutic techniques such as relaxation, desensitization, rational cognitive therapy, and psycho-spiritual religious cognitive approach (Rassool, 2016, p. 143).  In addition to the rich Islamic tradition of mental health wellness practices, daily mindfulness rituals and mindfulness values Muslims are familiar with, such as gratitude (shukr) and acceptance (tawakkul), can all be sources of healing for Muslim clients who are seeking therapy. As counselors, it is up to us as culturally competent professionals to increase our knowledge on how we can facilitate such healing.

Importance of Integrating Islamic Values and Practices to the Therapeutic Process

Though there have been works published on Islamically focused CBT, minimal research exists on specific integration models of Islamic based mindfulness practices into the counseling process. Dr. Abdallah Rothman, Executive Director of the International Association of Islamic Psychology and an LPC working at the intersection of Islamic spirituality and mental health practice, detailed how Islamic worldview can be practically and effectively integrated into psychotherapy. He (2018) noted, “I do not consider what I do as an integration of Islam into psychotherapy as much as I consider my practice of psychotherapy as a translation of concepts relating to the soul and to the healing from the Islamic tradition into the language of psychology within a therapeutic process” (p. 30). Though Rothman practices Islamic psychology himself, his techniques can be used with Muslim clients even if the counselor belongs to a different theoretical orientation. The interventions he describes include centering meditation exercises that focus on heart, tawbah and istighfar (asking for forgiveness and purification of heart from God), dhikr (remembrance) and prayers as relaxation homework assignments, and muraqaba/tafakkur (Islamic “meditation” where the focus is connecting with God).

Dr. Fyeqa Sheik (2018) authored the only article focusing specifically on utilizing an integrative psychotherapy approach when working with Muslim adolescents and children. Contrary to Rothman, Sheik’s therapeutic approach is “an integrative one in which the conceptualization and treatment are based on a Western psychotherapy approach with Islamic principles integrated into the treatment” (p. 223). Though Sheikh lists some points of conflict between CBT and Muslim’s religious worldview, she argues that CBT can be modified to be congruent within an Islamic framework (p. 215). Since religiously integrated CBT has already proven to be an effective tool for clients with anxiety (Vahidid-Motlagh & Kajbaf, 2011), creating Islamically based CBT interventions for Muslim clients can be highly effective. Some techniques Sheikh provides include modifying traditional CBT statements in an Islamic perspective, performing dua (supplication) to improve well-being, and salah (prayer) which helps focus one’s attention solely on the actions of salah rather than other wordy matters, similar to mindfulness techniques that help individuals be more conscious in the present moment (Sheikh, 2018, p. 216-219). 

Considerations and Conclusion: Psychoeducation and Further Research

Other than what Drs. Rothman and Sheikh’s provide, the counseling literature lacks any other research on how therapists can use innovative and integrative interventions to help the Muslim youth in their wellness journey. More research is essential on the effectiveness of different techniques that can be modified and adapted when working specifically with Muslim adolescents and whether Islamically integrated psychotherapy proves to be fruitful with them. What can be key to aiding young Muslim clients’ wellness is to use psychoeducation within therapy sessions to highlight how many of the daily Islamic practices that they are already used to are, in essence, mindfulness-based practices that can help them cope with stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues. Personally, I plan to conduct quantitative and qualitive research studies on Muslim adolescent awareness about Islamic mindfulness practices and coping with anxiety. What must be kept in mind for these studies and interventions is the diversity of the Muslim population and individuality of clients’ levels of religious practice spirituality, even if they belong to the same religion.

In the recent years, Islamic scholars and Muslim mental health counselors have increasingly been calling attention to the healing qualities of mindfulness within an Islamic tradition. The first Islamic guided meditation application, Sabr (patience) came out in August 2020. It includes guided meditation sessions through an Islamic lens by Muslim therapists and professionals, spiritually uplifting courses, prayers, Quran recitations, and courses on many topics including gratitude, patience, purification of the heart, having hope, reducing anxiety, mindfulness, forgiveness, and more. Sabr has more than eleven thousand followers on social media, highlighting the popularity of Islamically focused wellness practices. Yaqeen Institute (2017) has published an in-depth infographic and article, “How to Be a Mindful Muslim: An Exercise in Islamic Meditation.” To better help Muslim adolescents cope with different mental health issues through therapy, counselors need to first increase their cultural knowledge and competence about Islamic practices that can be incorporated into therapy sessions, and then use psychoeducation to increase client awareness on how their religion, which can be a source of distress in the United States due to discrimination and racism, can also be their source of healing.

References

• American Psychological Association. (2020). Stress & trauma toolkit for treating Muslims in a changing political and social environment. psychiatry.org. https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/cultural-competency/education/stress-and-trauma/muslims.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Fall 2020). Uniform Crime Report Hate Crime Statistics, 2019. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/victims.pdf
• Goforth, A. N., Pham, A. V., Chun, H., Castro-Olivo, S. M., & Yosai, E. R. (2016). Association of Acculturative Stress, Islamic Practices, and Internalizing Symptoms among Arab American Adolescents. School Psychology Quarterly, 31(2), 198–212.
• Herzig, B. (2016). (rep.). Young adult American-born Muslims and mental health: an exploration of attitudes, Challenges, and Needs (pp. 1–52). Keene, NH: Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
• Hofmann, S. G., Sawyer, A. T., Witt, A. A., & Oh, D. (2010). The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A Meta-Analytic Review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 169–183.
• Pew Research Center. (2020, May 30). S. Muslims concerned about their place in society, but continue to believe in the American dream. Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. https://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/findings-from-pew-research-centers-2017-survey-of-us-muslims/.
• Rassool, G. H. (2016). Islamic counselling: an introduction to theory and practice. Routledge.
• Rothman, A. (2018). An Islamic theoretical orientation to psychotherapy. In C. Y. Al-Karam (Ed.), Islamically integrated psychotherapy: Uniting faith and professional practice. (pp. 25–56). Templeton Press.
• Samari, G. (2016). Islamophobia and Public Health in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 106(11), 1920–1925. https://doi-org.ezproxy.montclair.edu/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303374
• Sheikh, F. (2018). Marrying Islamic principles with Western psychotherapy for children and adolescents: Successes and challenges. In C. Y. Al-Karam (Ed.), Islamically integrated psychotherapy: Uniting faith and professional practice. (pp. 208–228). Templeton Press.
• Shorey, R. C., Anderson, S., Lookatch, S., Moore, T. M., & Stuart, G. L. (2015). The relation between moment-to-moment mindful attention and anxiety among young adults in substance use treatment. Substance Abuse, 36(3), 374–379. https://doi-org.ezproxy.montclair.edu/10.1080/08897077.2014.935841
• Vahidid-Motlagh, L., & Kajbaf, M. B. (2011). The effectiveness of cognitive behavioral and religious cognitive therapy on anxiety in students. Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 5(3), 195-201.

It’s a land of tundra and toil; sacrifice and secrecy; fallacy and fight. They say Russia is a cold place in more ways than one. It’s no wonder given its tumultuous history. Maybe the cold is a means of survival because, sometimes, being numb is the only way to go on. No one remains unscathed by the sharpness of this world, but some can persevere when they can’t feel their own pain. Maybe that’s why I’ve come to love the cold. In its embrace, there lies peace, an escape from the pain of being ripped away from all I knew.

Many long to numb their pain, to withdraw into blankness, to surrender to an abyss of nothingness. Papa wandered into a welcome oblivion every time he opened a bottle. I swore against alcohol the moment he hit Mama for the first time.

I was born into the mess that was post-Soviet Russia. My name was Anastasia Snezhanova. The name Anastasia means “resurrection.” My surname means “snow.” I like to think of myself as resurrected from the snow.

For the first few years of my life, I found comfort around me. I had Mama, who sought to give me the love Papa couldn’t. But her love alone wasn’t enough to raise me. Our family fell into hardship again and again which forced Mama to bring me to an orphanage.

The first time we went was in winter—February, I think. Behind the snow-covered trees, the yellow building shone brightly, as if to welcome me out of the cold. We were greeted by a woman named Sasha who gave us a tour of the orphanage. Eventually, she led us to an office. I was left to sit in the corridor. I stared curiously at finger paintings on the walls while the adults spoke about the terms of my stay.

“Are the artists of these paintings going to be my friends?” I thought.

Eventually, Mama and Sasha emerged, nodding to each other politely. My fate was sealed. Mama took my hand, bent down in front of me, and said, “I promise I’ll be back for you soon.”

She squeezed me tightly, stood up, and turned away.

“Mama!”

I ran to her, clinging to her thigh. She reached down and cradled my head for a moment before peeling me off her. With clenched fists, I screamed. It echoed through the hall. Neither Mama nor Sasha even blinked. I screamed again and, still, I felt voiceless.

Mama looked at Sasha and sighed. Sasha smiled softly and stepped towards me. I backed away against the wall. My breathing grew heavy. I began to shake. The tears welled up in my eyes until no dam in the world could hold them back.

I sobbed in silence, then, wailed loudly, crying out “no” again and again.

“Asya,” Mama said with a quiet sadness in her voice.

“Mama,” I said. I knew she didn’t want to do this. Four-year-old me couldn’t understand why she was doing it anyways.

I wasn’t worried about being left alone. I could tell I wouldn’t be alone. I heard the muffled voices of children in a room downstairs. Instead, I was worried about Mama. She would return home where Papa would stumble home from the bar and unleash his anger on her day after day. And I wouldn’t be there. She would be alone.

“Asya, please,” she pleaded. “We talked about this. I’ll be back soon, moya snezhinka.”

“Moya snezhinka,” she called me. “My snowflake.”

In a low voice, she uttered the words, “I promise.”

I wiped my tears away and reached for her once more. She hugged me again and kissed my forehead.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you too, Mama.”

Then, she nodded to Sasha and said good-bye. Without another word, she walked down the stairs. I followed behind her and stopped at the bottom. She continued down the corridor to the entrance of the building. Still sobbing uncontrollably, I watched her open the door, step out, and disappear from view.

The days went by. I made friends. I stayed busy.

At the orphanage, my friends and I were given quite a lot of freedom and we took even more. We thought of ourselves as wild and wily rebels even though our escapades were innocent enough. On many nights, we snuck down to the kitchen and ate spoonfuls of honey. It felt right to share childhood. I hadn’t had a brother or sister at home. The orphanage blurred the line between friends and family.

The days turned into weeks. The weeks turned into months.

One early spring day, I was playing out in the yard when I saw her. She looked exactly the same except for her belly which was big and round.

“Asya!”

I ran out of the fenced-in yard and fell into her arms.

“Oh, my goodness! You’re all grown up, moya snezhinka!”

“Mama, why is your belly so big?”

“You’re going to have a little sister, Asya. Papa and I want you home with us.”

I stayed home all summer. Papa didn’t drink as much. He was often agitated but he had work that kept him busy. When he wasn’t home, Mama was at her happiest. She glowed with each day that passed. She told me about all the things we would do together—my little sister, Mama, and I.

A week before my fifth birthday, Mama said, “Asya, for your birthday, you can choose your new sister’s name.”

I thought of a graceful figure skater named Yelena. At the orphanage, my friends and I used to crowd around the TV to admire her.

“Yelena!” I exclaimed.

“Mmm… It means ‘sun,’” she explained. “Moya snezhinka and moye solntse!”

Two weeks after my birthday, Mama and Papa went to the hospital. I was left with an old lady in our building. The next evening, they returned. Papa said nothing when he picked me up. With a vacant look, he brought me upstairs to our apartment.

I couldn’t wait to meet Yelena. I burst through the door, tripping over the threshold in my excitement. I fell down hard and began to cry. Papa lifted me up and patted me on the head. It was a rare display of affection. Soon, I stopped crying and looked around eagerly.

Inside, it was dark. I could barely see Mama sitting on our old sofa in the corner. She said nothing. She didn’t even look at me. I ran to her.

“Mama! Where is Yelena? Where is my sister?”

I ran into the bedroom. No one was there.

“Where is she? Mama!”

“She’s not here, Anastasia,” Papa said without a trace of emotion.

“Where is she? When is she coming here?”

“She’s not coming,” he said.

“Why not?”

He never answered. He walked to a cabinet from which he retrieved a large bottle. He removed the cap, took a swig, and went into the bedroom, slamming the door.

Mama remained silent. I went to her. I climbed onto the sofa and towards her lap. She pushed me to the floor. I tried again. This time, she stood up and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

I sat on the floor next to the door. I heard her crying. I cried too.

For hours, I sat alone in the living room until I fell asleep.

The next day, I woke up in my little bed. I slept in the living room, under the window. Mama and Papa were nowhere to be seen. Their bedroom door was closed.

I waited all morning. At last, the front door opened and Papa stumbled in, carrying a large bottle in each hand and another under his right arm. He brought home and emptied three bottles each day for the next month. He didn’t hit Mama anymore. Instead, he fell on the floor and went to sleep before he had the chance to hurt her.

Once a week, he brought something sweet for me. This was new. Before then, Mama had repeatedly said we didn’t have the money for such things. Somehow, Papa found a way. Maybe he felt bad for his behavior.

The sweets did little to lift my spirits. I found myself missing my friends. At home, I felt more alone than ever. Mama still said nothing. She spent most of the day in her room. Many times, I heard her crying.

The next winter came and Papa was without work. He stopped bringing sweets. Instead of three bottles, he brought only one. It wasn’t enough to make him sleep. He started to hit Mama. They sent me to the old lady downstairs more often.

Over the next two years, I was brought to the orphanage five times. The last time was in September, 1999.

As she had done every other time before, Mama said, “I’ll be back soon.”

She never came back.

As the days grew colder, so did I. My tears stopped flowing. They remained frozen. Perhaps I even wanted time itself to freeze as it was forcing me farther from Mama with each passing day. Somehow, I knew she wasn’t coming back.

A week before Christmas, Sasha, the woman from the orphanage, brought me to her office where there were three strangers. One of them—a pretty lady—began to speak. I didn’t recognize her words. There was a man holding her hand who had bronze skin with dark hair and eyes.

Beaming, Sasha said, “These are your new parents, Asya!”

The third person, a pale lady with raven black hair, stepped forward.

“Hello, Asya! I’m Tatyana. Your new parents don’t speak Russian. I’m here to help. They’ve come to take you to America!”

“Where is that?”

“It’s far away from here. You’ll have to fly in an airplane to get there!”

“Okay…” I said, hesitantly. “When will I come back?”

Sasha sighed and said, “Asya, you’re going to live there. You’re going to have a new family and new friends.”

I’m sure my face looked puzzled.

The pretty lady bent down, looked directly into my eyes, and spoke.

“We know it sounds a bit scary, Asya,” Tatyana echoed her in Russian. “But we want to give you the very best life. We want you to be happy. And we will do everything we can to make that happen.”

Looking back into the pretty lady’s eyes, I felt an instinct—a need—to trust her. I made up my mind to give in and I’ve never regretted that decision. Not when I nervously boarded an airplane for the first time in my life. Not when I watched my homeland shrink below as we flew high into the sky. Not when I stepped off the airplane and heard every language except my own.

The day I arrived was a white Christmas Eve. I knew only three words in English: “hello” and “thank you.”

My new parents led me into a house and upstairs where I met many people who hugged me and smiled.

A few minutes later, the pretty lady grabbed my hand and said, “We have a surprise.”

“‘Syurpriz’?” I repeated. She nodded happily.

At that moment, everyone turned to look at the stairs. I heard voices coming closer. A little girl with sun-kissed hair appeared.

When she saw the pretty lady, the little girl cried, “Mommy!”

She took one step forward before tripping and falling on the floor. At once, she began crying and the man with the bronze skin ran to sweep her up in his arms. He put her down in front of me.

“Ana,” he said to me, “This is your sister, Laura.”

Seeing her up close, my heart nearly stopped. Then, she smiled and I cried.

The sun shone and the snowflake thawed.

Postpartum psychosis is a rare mental health condition that affects one or two in every 1,000 new mothers. Research suggests it is an overt presentation of bipolar disorder that coincides with hormonal shifts soon after delivery. Onset can be sudden and usually occurs 7-14 days after birth.

‘We can’t keep calling him Baby, can we?’ whispers Davy.

It’s Thursday 29th August 1985, and the cup of tea he brought me is still warm on the bedside table next to an empty plate. I’ve swallowed the last bite of jammy toast and am licking my sticky fingers. I feel loved and lucky, full of everything good, in my nest of pillows cradling the baby in the crook of my left arm. Years later I won’t remember if the morning outside our undergraduate flat in Aberystwyth was bright or overcast because in my low-lit memory the blackout curtains are always drawn, and the bedside lamp always blooms a languid glow.   

I match his whisper. ‘Ok, Daddy.’

‘So, we’ll decide tonight then – as his one-week birthday present?’ His words are a distant thrum.

About half of reported cases happen ‘out of the blue,’ to women without previous or familial history of psychiatric illness.

My gaze, like yesterday and the day before draws itself back to the baby. I brush his cheek with the back of my middle finger, watching his eyelids. They’re translucent, like mother-of-pearl, flickering with what I take to be his dreams.  My mind is dull with love.

‘Jane, did you hear me?’ 

I nod without looking up as Davy bends to skim my bedroom hair with his lips.

‘Bye both,’ he says, then kisses his fingertip and touches it onto the baby’s cheek. ‘Don’t forget your bath’s running, Mummy.’

His words seem faraway, quieter than my thoughts and take forever to ripple through the heavy hush.

When the door closes after him I murmur, ‘I won’t,’ then gaze at the baby, watching his white toweling Babygro as it rises and falls. Eventually I haul myself up, sliding my arm out slowly so as not to move him awake then make a barrier of pillows to stop him rolling off the bed.

Symptoms often cascade rapidly and may include sufferers harboring odd beliefs, like their baby has something to do with God, or the Devil.

Next door in the white-wooden bathroom I flick on the lights and turn off the tap. I get undressed and sink into the milky water letting names float around my head, each foretelling a different future. Jimmy will be a writer. Dylan will have his own bakery in the Gothic quarter in Barcelona. Billy will be a scientist who’ll lead the research team who’ll eventually eradicate cancer. I roll the name around my mouth – Billy Bennett-Kermode – imagining my savior baby all grown up, healing the world. It’s a wonderful daydream until an upstart thought cuts through the treacle. How will you leave him when you have to go back to college? The clock is tick-tick-ticking.

The irritating thought has’ been nagging at the back of my mind for days and I’m annoyed with myself for letting it spoil my morning. I get rid of it by standing up and focusing on the here and now. I look through the steam at my hazy reflection in the cabinet mirror, shrimp pink, rippled fat with pendant breasts hanging heavy, full again already, aching fuller still, leaking at the thought of him. I step out and dry myself.

Developing symptoms may include a combination of manic or depressive behaviors, such as hearing voices or seeing things that aren’t there, (hallucinations), and believing things that are not based on reality (delusions).

A loop on the old cotton towel snags on something high up on the back of my leg. I tug it and a thread pulls loose. I’m surprised. There’s nothing sharp about me, not anymore. I run a hand into the puckered arc of my buttock and thigh, feeling for – well, I’m not sure what I’m feeling for – dry skin perhaps or maybe a splinter. My finger recoils, pricked by something sharp. I look to see as a garnet of blood forms cabochon on my fingertip. I lick it away then rifle around in the wicker drawers under the sink to find my compact mirror. I need to see what has made me bleed.

The tiny reflection is difficult to catch, impossible to see in the harsh white light. I twist to get into the right position. It casts no shadow, traps no color, but, narrowing my eyes into slits and poking out my tongue, as though that will help, I just about see it. Growing out of my soft folds, out of my curds-and-whey skin, is a thorn – almost invisible – a sharp, see-through thorn of glass.

‘Get rid of it,’ spits a monster thought.

I do as I’m told, pulling at the thorn, but it’s impossible. It isn’t on the outside stabbing in, it’s on the inside, stabbing out.

‘Snap it off,’ barks the monster thought.

 I try really hard, holding my breath, but a fractal of pain, lightening hot, stops me. I try again and again but I can’t, even when I bite my lip hard to trick the pain.

Other symptoms may include panic, confusion and racing thoughts.

I scrabble around in the second drawer down. I might not be able to pull the thorn out but I can make it invisible. Nail-file in hand, I sit on the edge of the bath to reach underneath my leg, feeling my way. I run an exploratory rasp over the point. It’s painless – like filing nails. I file and file, shearing it away into sparkles that fairy-dust the floor. It takes forever and when I’m done, though it isn’t gone completely, it is blunted.  I rub oil into the raw skin around it, then all over, to soften myself back to normal, soft enough to hold my baby.

The baby!

I run naked into the bedroom.

He’s sleeping exactly as I left him. The room’s exactly as I left it, burgundy curtains drawn, cup of cold tea on the bedside table. I do what I’ve done so many times over the last few days and sleepless nights, I reach out to touch him, extending my finger to check he’s breathing.

I only see it because the overhead light isn’t on. The lamplight casts a shadow at exactly the right moment just before it connects. In the place where my mother’s touch should be is a talon of glass, almost invisible, poised to slice. I freeze then focus, seeing it clearly now. It’s thicker at the bottom than the top, slightly hooked, tapering to a point. I scream. It wakes him up. He starts to cry.

Common symptoms also include paranoia and feeling useless as a mother.

I want to pick him up to sooth him calm. I need to feed him quiet to release the pressure in my breasts that nursing him would ease.

‘Don’t touch him,’ spits a monster thought, ‘you’ll hurt him, with your thorns of glass.’ So instead, I look down at his jerky kicks and desperate fists as he cries himself crimson.

‘Thorns lead to more thorns,’ growls the monster thought.

I turn my hands over, and sure enough, another crystal pin-prick is almost breaking the surface of my right palm.

 ‘There might be one on your breast.’ The monster thought whispers my darkest fears like they’re delicious. ‘There might be one on your nipple.’

I blink away the image that springs into my mind, my insides shriveling to nothing. The baby turns his head sideways, rooting, frantic to latch on. I hold him away from me, folding the thorn into my palm, feeling with my safe middle finger. The nipple is safe. I sigh with relief as his hard gums clamp down and we connect, then I sit rigid against the wooden headboard too afraid to move myself comfortable, trapped and stiff with a growing thirst. By the time he’s finished and sleeping safely away from me in his cot, we’ve worked out a plan, my monster and I. 

‘No-one must know,’ it said, and because I was afraid, I agreed.

‘Especially Davy, he mustn’t ever know. I’m here now to help you cope, and if no-one sees them, if he doesn’t see them, no-one will ever know how dangerously, cruelly, terribly sharp you are.’

Typically, it is a family member, often the partner, who realizes something is wrong.

It’s a week later though I don’t know it. I’m scrubbing hard, sterilizing dozens of new bottles in my yellow kitchen gloves, screwing the brush round and round as hard as I can, to scour the tainted plastic.

‘Bye then,’ says Davy from behind my back. I feel him hovering, wanting to kiss me goodbye.

‘See you at teatime,’ I say in monotone, screwing harder to avoid the kiss.

 ‘Let him go,’ yawns the monster. ‘It’s not like you can let him anywhere near you, is it? Not with those disgusting thorns.’

‘S’pose not,’ I reply, forgetting myself, too tired to argue.

‘Did you say something?’ says Davy.

I turn and look at him like he’s mad. He makes his face expressionless to hide what he’s really thinking, then walks over to the pastel carrycot, kisses his finger and smears the dirty kiss onto Billy’s sleeping cheek.

‘Do you have to,’ I say. ‘It’s full of germs.’

‘Bye,’ he says again, hesitating at the door. 

I sit down at the table seeing it all from far, far away.

 ‘You’d better get a-filing,’ sing-songs the monster, ‘so they’re nice and short and safe and secret.’

It is rare for mothers with postpartum psychosis to harm their babies, but the cognitive disorganization associated with the condition, often results in them being neglectful of their baby’s needs or harming themselves.

There’s a noisy silence echoing through the kitchen in the wake of the slap. Billy is wet-faced, sitting in his bouncy chair. He’s just stopped crying and is breathing-in in shocked, jerky sobs. I can hear him but not feel him. I turn and stare at the naked hands in the washing-up bowl.

Billy was crying and I was so tired, so exhausted that I hadn’t been keeping on top of things, letting myself go, letting my secrets show. An unfiled thorn had pierced the marigold latex. It had let the dirty water in. I’d snapped the gloves off and hurled them wet against the wall, screaming wild and high like the banshee I am. They’d slapped hard, trailing a watery bruise down the magnolia paint.

‘Chop it off,’ snarls the monster. ‘Chop it off – the whole bloody hand. Chop off the whole bloody useless thing,’ and I watch as it claps its leathery hands, dances on its filthy feet, its glassy talons click-tapping on the Lino, so I don’t hear Davy behind me, home early because he’s worried sick and we really have to talk.  I don’t hear him reaching out to touch my shoulder.

I swing round raising my hands to slash. He takes them in his, turning them over slowly. Time stops as he kisses my sharpest point, pressing his lip to its pin-prick tip. I try to pull away and am surprised when it draws no blood. That night, whilst Billy sleeps, I let him talk to my monster, and show him all my thorns.

Current recommended treatment includes admission to specialist mother and baby units, where talking treatments and antipsychotic medication including mood stabilizers can be administered without separating mother and child.

Billy and I came home six weeks later. Not from hospital, but from Blackburn in Lancashire where my stepmother was sister on the Intensive Care Unit. She used her contacts to access outpatient treatment for me and I received better care than most could expect in 1985. Then, postpartum psychosis was still medically undescribed and there were no generally agreed symptoms or treatment plans. Writing this is the first time I’ve set my experience into the context of current understanding and I’ve been struck by what a textbook case I was. It feels empowering, normalizing, therapeutic even, and makes me appreciate how fortunate I was, getting the treatment I did. Especially so, because sadly, my treatment was good even by modern standards. Though postpartum psychosis is better understood nowadays, beds in mother and baby clinics are still few and far between and there are huge regional differences that make service provision patchy. Diagnosis is often missed or comes too late, all of which seems properly crazy because it’s such a treatable condition, a very temporary madness.  Without treatment, it can last for years, interfering with a mother’s ability to connect with and care for her children, causing incalculable long-term harm to mother and child.

And then there’s the prejudice and stigma. The stigma attached to having had postnatal psychosis is as real now as it was in 1985. It makes people hide that they’ve had it, so they never talk about coming out the other side of the strange and scary rabbit hole, and never share their stories. That’s why I’m writing this, though it’s taken me thirty-two years to pluck up the courage.

That first evening back in Aber, I was feeling how lucky I’d been even without the benefit of hindsight. Everyone had finally left us in peace and I was skim-reading The Guardian at the kitchen table – pit closures in Yorkshire, the Broadwater Farm riots – not exactly uplifting, but it still felt good to be back in the real world.

Davy had brewed up and was balancing toward me carrying two teacups that rattled fragile on their bony saucers. Funny what sticks in your memory – he looked like he was tightrope walking. I put a careful finger through the handle and raised my cup, miming a toast so as not to risk the brittle china, then took the small white neuroleptic from the saucer and swallowed it with the first sip.

‘Welcome home, Mummy,’ he said.

The scars where the thorns still scratched just below the surface were almost invisible that night, not in a whimsical, happily-ever-after kind of way, but really, because they’d started to become ordinary – part of our everyday landscape – and because my monster was sleeping, sleeping like a baby.

References List

• National Childbirth Trust (n.d.) What is Postpartum Psychosis? [On-line]. Available at https://www.nct.org.uk/parenting/what-postpartum-psychosis (Accessed 28 Feb 2020).
• National Health Service (2014) Postpartum Psychosis [On-line]. Available at http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/postpartum-psychosis/Pages/Introduction.aspx (Accessed 28 February 2020).
• Postpartum Support International (n.d.) Postpartum Psychosis [On-line]. Available at http://www.postpartum.net/learn-more/postpartum-psychosis/ (Accessed 28 February 2020).
• Royal College of Psychiatrists (2014) Postpartum Psychosis: Severe mental illness after childbirth [On-line]. Available at http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsdisorders/postpartumpsychosis.aspx (Accessed 28 February 2020).
• Sit, D. Rothschild, A.J. Wisner, K.L. (2006) A Review of Postpartum Psychosis [On-line]. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109493/ (Accessed 28 February 2020).
• Wikipedia (2016) Postpartum psychosis [Online]. 26 October 2016 Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_psychosis  (Accessed 28 February 2020)

Tawhid, derived from wahda (oneness), means unifying, regarding as one, believing in God’s Oneness or Unity, and sincerely accepting the reality that there is no deity but God. The Sufis add to these meanings the ideas of seeing only He Who is the One, and knowing, mentioning, desiring, and calling Him alone, and conducting relations with others than Him only because of Him.

The beginning of unity is admitting that the Divine Being is beyond and above all concepts that occur to the mind concerning Him, the result of this being that there is no room for anything else save Him in one’s heart, according to the depth of the spiritual state and pleasures, and fixing one’s eyes on Him alone. In this meaning, unity is both the foundation of Islam and its fruit. Sufism has considered unity with respect to both its beginning and end. Those who are not included in the fold of Sufism have regarded it slightly differently.

According to such people, unity means recognizing the Almighty as the Lord of all creation, and responding to His Divinity with servanthood or worshipping, and acting with a feeling of responsibility. In other words, unity is the belief we must acknowledge with both our words and our actions that God has absolute authority over the whole of creation and disposes as He wills, and He is absolutely above having a like, a rival or an equal. In addition, since He is the One Who absolutely deserves to be worshipped and to be desired, we must serve Him perfectly in a way that contains the meanings of glorifying, exalting and praising Him, and by declaring that He is the All-Holy. To sum up these definitions, we can say that unity has three types or degrees: unity based on knowledge and belief, unity based on spiritual discovery and pleasures, and unity based on the Divine Being’s bearing witness to Himself. Being aware of the last one is a special gift granted by the Almighty to His chosen servants.

• “Unity based on belief and knowledge” is the kind or degree of unity which is acquired through observation, inference or Those who have acquired this degree of unity are free from associating any kind of partners to God and spend their lives thinking about God’s Oneness, mentioning Him and feeling Him in the depths of their hearts.
• “Unity based on spiritual discovery and pleasures” means feeling the knowledge of God which has been acquired through observation and reasoning in one’s conscious nature, sipping the pleasures originating in this knowledge, and experiencing it in the heart and daily life.
• “Unity based on the Divine Being’s bearing witness to Himself” is so profound that only those whom God has favored with it can feel it, and those who can feel it either become dumbfounded or can express it to those around them only to the extent to which He allows In the sight of the initiates who can feel such a degree of unity, all proofs and indications of the Almighty fade away, things turn into a mirage, all existence is reduced to relativity, and the attitude of modesty which initiates must adopt before God tells them to keep silent. For this station is that where an initiate must keep silent and this degree or kind of unity is the unity that brings about silence.

Jalalu’d-Din Rumi says concerning the unity of this degree:

O brother, keep aloof from those
who are busy with discussion about the Divine Being,
so that the Almighty may cause knowledge
from His Presence to rise in your heart.
When speech comes to this point,
lips are no longer able to move or close;
and the pen breaks when it reaches the same point.
This is not the station where eloquent words will be uttered;
So, come and give up talking; God knows best the truth.

This station, where knowledge from God’s Presence has turned into knowledge of God from His Presence, where the consciousness has been awarded special favors, and where travelers to God feel that they are being attracted toward Him by Himself, is the station of being a mirror to God where a drop has become like an ocean, an atom like the whole universe, and non- existence is honored with existence. In his introduction to Harabat, Ziya Pasha [1], with his poetic ability and pleasure, describes the state of an initiate in this station as follows:

O You Who exist,
and Who have brought existence into existence,
there is nothing which does not exist;
how can it be possible to claim Your non-existence!

Those who are the foremost in unity, which has opened for a drop the way to become an ocean and an atom to become a sun, and which has caused that which does not exist to gain existence, and has encompassed both the beginning and the end of the journey, and which it is possible for everybody to attain according to the capacity of each, are the Prophets. They begin their speeches with unity, and stop where they must stop because unity requires them to do so. The first platform for the travelers to God on their way to God is also this objective consideration of unity, where the beginning and end of the journey are united. All the Messengers and Prophets of God, from the first to the last, who carried out their responsibilities on the way of wakefulness, preached this greatest pillar of belief first, declaring: Worship God alone: you have no deity other than Him (7:59, 65, 73, 85 …). Then they went on to communicate other principles and commandments to explain its meaning and content and to establish these in this world.

This consideration of unity is the first door to entering Islam and is the means to feeling and experiencing Islam with a certainty based on knowledge, and a certainty based on observation, and a certainty based on experience. This is also the first call of God to know Him—according to the individual’s capacity—as He makes Himself known. One enters the fold of Islam with such a concept of unity, and those who have the potential to advance, advance by means of it. Studies and mental endeavors gain profundity through this concept, and it is again through it that what lies beyond the relative truths appears. The difference between eternity and what is eternal and what is contained in time can be discerned within this concept. One perceives through this concept the nature of the relation between God as the Creator and the Sole Object of Worship with other beings as the created and those responsible for worshipping and servanthood. Again, it is through this concept that one understands that the Creator is not of the same kind as the created, and that His Attributes are perfect, universal and essential to Him, while the attributes of the created are imperfect, particular, relative and borrowed. This concept of unity causes one to base all one’s views on the principles taught by the Prophets. Starting from these principles, one is saved from falling into errors such as, while arguing (in the name of unity) that He is absolutely free of any imperfections that belong to the created, going to the extreme of denying God any Attributes; or (another extreme) assuming that God takes on bodily form (incarnation) or that a created being can be united with God and become God (union). One is also saved, while observing His manifestations, from likening God in any respect to the creation, or, while interpreting His Attributes, likening Him to the created or attributing to Him a body and being that are contained in time and space. Thus one displays the worthiness (and need) to be counted among the people of the Straight Way, when one prays at least forty times a day (in the daily Prayers) to God to guide one on this Way.

That conception of unity also serves to guide travelers to God so that they can perceive the sole source and nature of the Divine Destiny and Decree. Turning to Him, they do not waste their lives in the philosophical deviations of the Mu‘tazila (the Muslim theologians who maintain that human beings will and create their actions) and the Jabriya (who deny human free will). They serve God sincerely, and feel a deep respect for Him because of His every commandment. Without denying that they have been endowed with free will, they believe that God is the Creator and the eternal origin or cause of everything, and expect from Him the attainment of all their purposes. They always rely on Him, and implore Him for happiness in both this world and the next.

Philosophers such as Aristotle, Abu ‘Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Nasiru’d-Din at-Tusi [2], who considered unity as the Existence alone with no identity or Attributes, opened the door to the deviation of monism, which would later evolve as a philosophical system, in turn giving rise to many other falsehoods. Those who have strayed into incarnation and union—which can be said to have been smeared onto the belief-system of Islam by Neo-platonism—have fallen into associating partners with God by seeing existence as the constant appearance or externalization of the Necessarily Existent One, and therefore as being (in some measure) identifiable with Him. Among other groups or movements, the Qadariya and Jahmiya, which deny God any Attributes, have attributed to God impotence and to human will absolute power. The attitude of the Jabriya in particular, who deny human free will and regard humans as if they were dried leaves blown about by winds, is totally contrary to the most rational realities and is a great slander against God. What is true for all such movements, even if there was a grain of truth in them, is that their early followers were not able to save themselves from going to extremes and they prepared many points from which those who followed them and the ideas they promoted might stray.

As for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who have accepted the truth of the Messenger and his Companions, they have learned unity (as well as other aspects of Islam), from, once more, the explanations, attitudes, visions, and spiritual discoveries of the true successors of the Messenger and the Companions, experiencing it in their inner and outer worlds. According to them, unity is the bedrock of Islam, a fact which the Qur’an and the Sunna give the greatest importance to with respect to the Creator’s Lordship and recognition of our being His servants who must recognize and worship Him. The Qur’an and God’s Messenger frequently refer to the Divine Being and His Attributes, Names, and Acts, including the establishment of Himself on the Throne—the nature of which is unknown to us—His speaking to the Messengers and Prophets, and honoring ever He wills with speaking to Himself, and reminding us of His absolute, unconditioned Life, Knowledge, Hearing, Seeing, Power, Will, and Speech. They also teach us that God is the Creator and the One Who takes life and revives after death, and that He is the All-Providing. All these Attributes and Acts of God have a close connection with God’s being One and Unique.

Notes

1. Ziya Pasha (1825–1880) was one of the influential political and literary figures of the second half of the 19th-century Ottoman Turkey. He published Hurriya (Freedom) newspaper (Tr.)
2. Nasiru’d-Din at-Tusi (1201-1280) was one of the leading scientists, philosophers, and theologians of the time and was a prolific writer. He also wrote poetry in Persian. He built an observatory at Maragha in 1262. His influence on sciences was immense. (Tr.)

Great explosions similar to those of pistol sounds are sometimes heard underwater. These loud sounds come from pistol shrimps, measuring only 3-5 cm in length. The “bullets” used by this animal consist of bubbles. The entire process is called sonoluminescence, in which water is energized with specific vibrations causing emission of light through bubbles. It was found that resulting temperatures can be as high as 4,400 °C.

The sounds produced when the pistols of these shrimps are fired are among the loudest sounds that can be heard in the oceans. The tiny shrimps compete with larger sperm whales and beluga whales for the title of the loudest animal in the oceans. When with their colonies, they can cause interference with sonar and underwater communication.

So how does this shrimp’s “pistol” operate? How does it produce underwater “bullets” at such high temperatures? The pistol shrimp has two claws, one larger than the other. The larger claw, which is as large as half of the shrimp’s body, is the pistol. Unlike the smaller one, this claw does not have two symmetrical pincers, but two parts, one fixed (propus), the other moving (dactyl). The dactyl has a plunger which helps with the shrimp’s move. Its strong muscles allow the shrimp to snap its pistol claw with astonishing power. The explosion resulting from this miraculous snapping movement can generate an ear-splitting sound of 218 decibels and a maelstrom with a pressure of 80 kPa at its center. This strong sound wave is similar to a sonic boom. Thanks to this mechanism uniquely granted to it, the shrimp can easily hunt, knock out, and eat its prey.

When hunting, the shrimp hides itself in its underground burrow, patiently waiting for its prey to come within range. When prey comes within range it comes out of its hiding and fires up its pistol by snapping its claw with a very high speed. Coral reef biologist Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian Institute conducted studies on the chain of events that occur at this moment and explained that the resulting sound wave and highly heated bubble is fired up like a bullet. As the bubble bullet is hurtled forward with a speed of approximately 100 km per hour, a shock wave is created. The fired-up bubble implodes and its temperature reaches 4,400 °C all of a sudden. This astounding hunting event occurs in 300 microseconds only. As the bubble implodes, a sudden flash of light appears. However, the flashing of light is so sudden that the resulting light is not visible to the naked eye.

Besides hunting their prey, pistol shrimps may also use their sonic pistols to dig burrows into rocks. The impact from the firing up of their pistols is so powerful that they can dig proper burrows into hard basalt stones. In addition, these shrimps are known to attack their own kind. Similar to a Western duel they fire their pistols against each other at a close range to assert dominance. In this fight, shrimps may lose their claws. In this case, it was found, lost claws are re-grown. These shrimps may occasionally use their claws for communication as well.

Although they are equipped with a powerful weapon, pistol shrimps may exhibit lengthy symbiotic relationships in solidarity with other living beings. Some pistol shrimps may seek shelter in coral mazes while others live among the tentacles of sea anemones that resemble plants. Other species dig a burrow and invite a goby to share it.  In this relationship, the goby provides advance warning against threats while the pistol shrimp assumes the task of building a safe burrow.

Some species of pistol shrimps establish colonies inside sponges. These shrimp communities, ruled by a king and a queen, were first identified by marine biologist Emmett Duffy. Duffy noted that this social union, rarely seen among marine animals, is similar to those observed among colonies of ants and bees. When these sponge-dwelling shrimps face with an intruder, they snap their claws rhythmically to send an alarm asking help from other group members.

The pistol shrimp is among the endless works of art we can observe and study in nature. Each and every one of these works of art urges us to wonder the infinite source of knowledge, power, will, wisdom, and mercy that enables them for our benefit.

References

• How It Works Book of Amazing Animals, Imagine Publishing Ltd. 2012, s. 53-54.
• Koukouvinis, Phoevos; Christoph Bruecker ve Manolis Gavaises, “Unveiling the physical mechanism behind pistol shrimp cavitation,” Scientific Reports | 7: 13994 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-14312-0,  www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14312-0.pdf
• tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synalpheus_pinkfloydi
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae
• video.nationalgeographic.com/video/worlds-deadliest/deadliest-pistol-shrimp
• www.wired.com/2014/07/absurd-creature-of-the-week-pistol-shrimp

Until recently, the human brain was thought to complete its development to a great extent when the child is 5 or 6 years old. This was mostly theoretical, for we did not have the technology to visualize the brain of a living person in order to observe its development. This changed with the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique, which began to be used in various applications in 1970s and enabled us to obtain more clear information about the structure and functions of the brain. As of 1991, thanks to the functional MR (fMRI) technique we are now able to observe activities of a living brain. fMRI technology is used to scan and visualize the specific region of the brain that is activated in the face of stimuli such as noise, vision, and thought. Therefore, the fMRI research carried out during the last ten years has been guiding research studies on how memory, language, pain, and learning occur as well as those on how emotions are formed with brand-new perspectives. New discoveries about the adolescent brain have radically changed our understanding of how students aged 11-18 learn.

Adolescence is a significant process in which great changes are experienced both physically and mentally. The structure and substance content of both the body and the brain are reconstructed during this period. Knowing the changes experienced by the adolescent brain during this period will be very useful for both parents and teachers as they support their children and students in their growth and settling their characters.

White matter

White matter in the brain is mainly made up of myelinated axons and glial cells. An axon is a long, slender projection of a neuron (nerve cell). Myelin is a white layer of a fatty dense sheath that surrounds an axon. The formation of myelin sheath is called myelination or myelinization. Glial cells in human body far outnumber neurons and although they do not transmit electrical signals they have essential functions by producing and maintaining the milieu for neurons to function properly. One of their functions is to destroy and remove harmful chemicals and dead neurons. Glial cells also play an active role in myelination. The electrical signals at axon terminals are transmitted to other neurons at junctions called synapses. There is no physical contact among most of the neurons, therefore the message at the synapses is transmitted chemically to other neurons through neurotransmitters. A myelinated axon transmits electrical signals at a rate 100 times faster than an unmyelinated one and the myelin sheath helps a neuron to regenerate faster. In other words, it restores in a markedly faster way to a state in which it transmits a new electrical signal. Once these two features are combined this results in a 3000-fold increase in the bandwidth if we liken a myelinated axon to an internet cable. Another function of the myelin sheath is to calibrate the coordination of the signals that come from other neurons. It allows for a graceful timing of transmissions so that signals that come from neurons that are both near and far can be received simultaneously. As a result of myelinization, the amount of white matter continues to increase linearly during adolescence until the end of the 20s. Adolescents, therefore, process information in a way much faster than that of children and can thus move, speak, make decisions, and react faster.

Gray matter

Gray matter is mostly composed of neuronal cell bodies, dendrites (short body extensions) and supporting cells. It also contains the connections linking neurons to other neurons, known as the synapses.  A baby’s brain has up to twice as many synapses as it will have in adulthood.  A total of 60% of babies’ energy is used by their brains compared to around 20-25% in adults. The volume of gray matter begins to decrease seriously during adolescence and this decrease can be attributed to a process called “synaptic pruning.” Through this process, the neural links that are not used or stimulated by environmental factors are pruned and eliminated. Although this sounds like a negative process, on the contrary, it is essential for a more efficient brain. The links that are unwanted and unused are destroyed. This is a very significant process that is partially influenced by one’s existing environment with a lasting effect in shaping a person’s life. An increase in gray matter occurs for a short term just at the beginning of adolescence. A second synaptic pruning takes place later during adolescence. This occurs most often in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain. This region has been implicated with many significant and vital functions of the brain such as planning, decision making, prioritization, strategy formulation, suppressing urges and desires, delaying gratification, understanding others and maintaining social interaction, and setting long-term goals.

One biological fact that will help us understand adolescents a little bit more includes the fact that myelination and brain development occur in a back-to-front pattern. That is, the prefrontal cortex, which controls the functions that implicate these vital and adult features, develops last and this corresponds to the years of life after age 20.

One’s social environment contributes significantly to synaptic pruning and regulation of the morphological structure of the brain. One dimension we can add to this fact is that children do not only need convenient physical environments, but also need spiritual environments where they can develop and realize their spiritual lives, feel their humanity, and establish cordial relations with God.

The source of adolescence problems: limbic system

The integrative parts of the limbic system, or as it is popularly known as the “emotional brain,” are the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, and the hypothalamus. The hippocampus is both the center of emotions and an important part of the memory. The amygdala, on the other hand, is the center for strong feelings such as anger, fear, joy, and pleasure. The limbic system is the region of the brain that controls most of the emotions and behaviors underlying the basic problems and characteristics of adolescents such as basic risk taking, motivation, hunger, sleep, long-term memory, excitement-seeking, reward-seeking, novelty-seeking, superiority of emotional expression, and priority of immediate needs. As already stated, the brain matures from back to front. That is, while the development of the limbic system is complete by adolescence the prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. If we liken the limbic system to a car’s accelerator pedal, then the prefrontal cortex can be likened both to its steering wheel and its brake pedal. That is, adolescents are like a car with the accelerator pedal fully pressed but the steering wheel and brake pedal not working fully yet. Studies have found that in adolescent brains the nucleus accumbens, the region of the brain related to reward, motivation, and pleasure, is much more activated in the face of big rewards in comparison to the brains of children and adults. However, the impacts of small or uninteresting rewards or goals are even less in an adolescent brain than they are to a child’s brain. I contend that this is an issue that parents and teachers should dwell on.

Studies have also shown that adolescents tend to take bigger risks in environments where their peers are present. It has been found that adolescents can think as maturely as adults in laboratory setting, that is in neutral conditions where emotions do not interfere. However, this completely changes in the presence of emotional interference, peer pressure, or other factors related to one’s peers.

Brain research has revealed that young people’s brains tend to change in line with the external interventions, education, and rehabilitation they are provided with. The environment, which includes education as well, can play a significant role in shaping a young individual’s brain. New information and developments related to brain development have brought about radical changes in the fields of education and pedagogy. New learning theories also necessitated the development of new and alternative teaching techniques that are congruent with the brain development model.

Reference

• Armstrong, T. (2016). The power of the adolescent brain: Strategies for teaching middle and high school students. Retrieved from https://www.weareteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/ASCD-2-Book-Sample-PoweroftheAdolescentBrain.pdf

It was December 31^st, 2019 when Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia seen in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Later, we’ve learned that it was due to a new virus initially found in a seafood bazaar within the city. The virus was a type of coronavirus, a category of respiratory viruses that are known to cause severe acute respiratory syndrome, also known as SARS. (CDC, 2019). Because the original virus that is responsible for the Covid-19 Pandemic was similar to SARS-CoV it was named SARS-CoV-2 (CDC, 2019).  To be precise, the virus’s name Covid-19 is an acronym of CO (corona), VI (virus), D (disease), and 19 (last two digits of the year it was found) (CDC, 2019).

Nobody in the United States where I live in, including myself, paid much attention to the news about this new coronavirus incident because we simply thought we did not need to worry about a virus that had appeared so far away from home.

However, in March 2020, the director general of World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) declared Covid-19 as a pandemic after assessment of the rapid spread and severity of the virus across the globe. The organization then warned people with additional precautions of using face mask and social distancing in public in the hopes that it might help curb the spread of the pandemic (Red Cross, 2020). This was just the beginning, and nobody had no idea about unforeseen policies and applications in peoples’ lives all over the world. Then, most governments dictated global physical closures of businesses, sport activities, schools, and pushed all institutions to migrate to online platforms (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020). Online learning meant the use of the Internet with some other important technologies to develop materials for educational purposes, instructional delivery, and management of programs (Fry, 2001).

In the following sections, I will summarize some of my readings about the effects of COVID-19 on our lives; especially on K-12 education settings.

The new normal: Online education

According to the United Nation’s (UN) August 2020 report, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused the largest disruption of education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries (UN, 2020). Impacts of school closures across the world affected all children but in different degrees depending on country/region where they live, their ages, family backgrounds, gender, and such. These children were deprived from daily access to school, the basic support schools provided for them, group activities, team sports, and recreational options such as pools and playgrounds. Unfortunately, the crisis has exacerbated pre-existing educa­tional inequalities by reducing the opportunities for many of the most vulnerable children, youth, and adults.

As a result, the education we have known and provided has changed dramatically and online e-learning, or digital learning, have become the new normal. Teaching was undertaken remotely and on digital platforms (Li, & Lalani, 2020).  However, this was far from perfect and it came with some challenges associated with several benefits.

Benefits of online learning

One major silver lining that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic is a much greater appreciation for physical schooling and the pivotal roles that teachers play in society (Vegas, & Winthrop, 2020). Indeed, as a parent I know firsthand that we struggled to work with our children at home due to school closures which led much more public recognition of the essential caretaking role schools and teachers play in. This is especially true for teachers because younger students struggle to learn from home, especially when their parents are not available to help them. This let us to multiply our gratitude for teachers, their skills, and their invaluable role in student well-being.

The pandemic has also shifted who is involved in our children’s education (Quilter-Pinner, & Ambrose, 2020). Although formal learning primarily involves students and teachers, Covid-19 has given parents some extra and daunting but much more active and important roles in their children’s education. In other words, parents are back to being their kids’ teacher again but this time there was one difference because they have literally become a teacher of their kids.

Research suggests that online teaching has helped students learn better and faster within a short time compared to education that takes place in classrooms (Li, & Lalani, 2020). This is especially true for those who have the right technology and internet. Some research has found that students retain 25-60% more material when learning online compared to only 8-10% in a traditional classroom. This is mostly due to the flexibility that it gives students in learning such as learning at their own pace, going back and re-reading, re-watching, and skipping content. These findings, and others, all indicate that the changes the pandemic brought about might be here to stay.

Cons

The pandemic has affected us all globally not only in terms of our social, economic, and political lives, but also emotionally and psychologically (Miller, 2020). For example, Jansen (2020) pointed out that, “Our biggest mistake would be to treat children as cognitive machines that can simply be switched on again after the trauma of Covid-19.” Health experts indicates that students, parents, and teachers might have been going through a great deal of anxiety and stress (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020) and transition back to normal might take longer than expected.

In online learning, learners do not have much choice on the platforms they sign up to use if they want to continue their education. User data and digital footprints are the new oil for companies in terms of marketing (Kerres, 2020), because they are being collected, analyzed and, in some cases, sold to third parties (Prinsloo, Slade, & Khalil, 2019).

In other cases, there is a need for better cyber security as user data can potentially be hacked or leaked (Davey, 2020). Safety and security while in virtual calls has also been an issue due to “bombers” that hack in and display rude or inappropriate messages (Manskar, 2020). The use of online proctoring services has also surged during the pandemic to prevent cheating and academic dishonesty, which raises some serious concerns about student privacy and test anxiety students feel as a result of being surveilled.

Digital divide

With the majority of schools closed due to Covid-19, many emergency remote education approaches have depended on access to the Internet in addition to data and devices to provide continuation of teaching and learning. This shift to online has highlighted the stark digital divide between those who have access to electricity, internet infrastructure, data, and devices and those that do not. For example, as of 2019, only 39.6% of Africans have internet access compared to 87.7% of Europeans and 95% of North Americans (Internet World Stats, 2020). Where there is access, there are further inequalities in bandwidth distribution, data prices, and internet speed, which are further shaped by socio-economic factors of gender, age, employment, educational background, neighborhood and household income (Rohs, & Ganz, 2015).

Similarly, there are also differences in access to laptops, smartphones, feature phones, TV and radios between high-, middle-, and low-income countries and populations within countries. Even when these devices are present in households there are often not enough devices to accommodate the simultaneous educational needs of multiple children, as well as parents, who may need them for remote working.

Inequity and social justice

The digital divide between communities has become more explicit and stronger with Covid-19 than ever before. The material, cultural, and geopolitical inequalities are now clearly visible through the lens of Covid-19. During the epidemic, wealthy people have been able to supply food, safely self-isolate, and purchase cleaning products, yet lower income citizens often have not had access to the same necessities. Many workers in service industries have lost their jobs due to lockdowns and have had no source of income to support their families, while others have put their lives at risk every day because they have had to work outside the home.

This has been pretty much similar for education all over the world. While high-income groups have afforded alternative means to support their kids, including but not limited to buying laptops, faster internet services, and paying for private tutoring, many low- and middle-income populations have had to suffice with whatever learning options that were provided for them. Some children did not even have access to food programs that provided them with some level of basic nourishment.

Gender issues

While shutting down schools and forcing people to do homeschooling were key to slow down the spread of Covid-19, this had some negative effects for others especially adolescent girls and women (Mutavati, Zaman, & Olajide, 2020). Many countries have reported increases in domestic and sexual violence (ibid.). For instance, a study directed in times of Ebola showed that school closures led to increased gender-based violence, teenage pregnancies, child marriage, exploitation and other forms of abuse against adolescent girls (Bandiera et al., 2019). The Global Partnership for Education (2020) warns that “the impact of Covid-19 on adolescent girls is likely to surpass that caused by the Ebola epidemic.”

In addition to domestic and sexual violence, Covid-19 has also disproportionately affected women, particularly mothers and those in care-giver roles. Women had already spent a lot more time, compared to men, in handling domestic tasks such as laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, and taking care of kids (Medina & Lerer, 2020). This imbalance has increased exponentially during the crisis where women’s professional careers have taken the greatest hit (ibid.). What’s more, it was usually mothers who have had to take on the role of teacher in out-of-school learning, women have been asked to take time off their jobs so their husbands could continue working through Covid-19 unimpeded.

Implications

The pandemic has highlighted what skills and competencies are needed to be prepared for a crisis like Covid-19. The need for digital literacy for students, parents and teachers arose as most critical in emergency remote education.

The pandemic has also emphasized the need for educators to become familiar and trained in online pedagogies because of differences in income and constraints between online and in-person learning environments. In low- and middle-income countries, familiarity with how low-tech solutions can be used to support learning is needed for teachers. Thus, as suggested by Koehler and Mishra (2009), the need to redesign the curriculum for technological knowledge in addition to pedagogical and content knowledge was obvious and teacher professional development needs to be expanded to cover this deficiency.

Beyond the skills that are needed to survive a crisis, the pandemic has also shown us many skills that can be carried forward when we return to a new normal. The pandemic has shown the need for a pedagogy of care in addition to integrating digital teaching to their curriculum. Now more than ever before educators are thinking about their learners beyond their roles in the classroom such as the difficulties they may be facing in their personal lives. The pandemic has also reminded us one more time of the need to shift to more student-centered practices and pedagogies that emphasizes the process of learning, student experience, and engagement online.

Another lesson we can learn from this pandemic is that increased parental engagement leads to better learning outcomes. Therefore, governments should better develop programs and provide funding to strengthen the relationship between schools, parents, and their children. 

Finally, for those that have been facing injustices prior to Covid-19, the hope is not to return to normal but to use this crisis as an opportunity to fix an education system that was already broken to begin with (Black, 2020).

Shortly, the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects will have lasting outcomes on educators, students, their parents and on whole country, especially on women.

Back to school

Schools returned to 100% in-person education as it was before the Covid-19 in fall 2021. Governments and school districts have taken protective measures in school settings to prevent transmission of the Covid-19 viruses including social distancing, correct use of masks, handwashing, and respiratory protocol.

The outcomes of the education with Covid needs a separate article to discuss. Now, I will briefly touch upon some of the results from most current research on our students’ learning after a year of online education.

Researchers were expecting educational disruptions caused by the pandemic in the form of weakened student learning (Kuhfeld et al., 2020; Hamilton et al., 2020). However, early results of research on student learning yielded mixed results. For example, Renaissance (2021) examined at a large sample of about 3.8 million 1^st through 8^th grade students who had taken their Star assessments in math or reading during the winter of the 2020-2021 school year. They compared students’ scores for those who also took fall 2019 and fall 2020 tests. Overall, they found that students’ scores rose during the first half of the 2020-2021 school year in the amount of what Renaissance (2021) would expect in a non-pandemic school year. In another research, however, Pier et al. (2021) found that California students’ learning during the Covid-19 school year caused them slower academic growth where they lost around 2.6 months in English/Language Arts and 2.5 months in math compared tp regular school years. It seems that we need more and comprehensive research to see how our students’ academic learning are affected by online education.

Qualitative research regarding students’ experiences of online learning revealed that most of the students, regardless of age, want to return to physical schools for their education (Sahin & Matteson, 2021). Younger kids are especially more interested in in-person instruction than older kids do (Sahin & Matteson, 2021). This might stem from the fact that younger students are still children and miss their friends and teachers more for socialization and fun. Similarly, high schoolers are more likely to be in hybrid or online instruction model than younger learners (Henderson et al., 2020). Clearly students missed the physical social interaction and engagement with their friends and teachers instead of being isolated at home a whole year.

References

• Adedoyin, O. B., & Soykan, E. (2020). Covid-19 pandemic and online learning: the challenges and opportunities. Interactive Learning Environments, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1813180
• Bozkurt, A. et al., (2020). A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis. Asian Journal of Distance Education 15(1), 1-126.
• Li, C., & Lalani, F. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education forever. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/
• Centers for Diesease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2020). Coping with stress. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html
• Devercelli, A. (2020). Supporting the youngest learners and their families in the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) response. World Bank. https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/supporting-youngest-learners-and-their-families-covid-19-coronavirus-response
• Henderson, M. B., Peterson, P. E., & West, M. R. (2020). Pandemic parent survey finds perverse pattern: Students are more likely to be attending school in person where covid is spreading more rapidly. Retrieved from https://www.educationnext.org/pandemic-parent-survey-finds-perverse-pattern-students-more-likely-to-be-attending-school-in-person-where-covid-is-spreading-more-rapidly/
• Sahin, A. & Matteson, S. (2021). Impact of online learning and students’ personal factors on students’ NWEA scores. Submitted for publication.    
• Vegas, E., & Winthrop, R. (2020). Beyond reopening schools: How education can emerge stronger than before COVID-19. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-reopening-schools-how-education-can-emerge-stronger-than-before-covid-19