YAQIN: Culturally Sensitive, Agentic AI for Mental Healthcare Support Among Muslim Women in the UK

2026-03-08

AI Summary

This study addresses the persistent trust deficits and engagement barriers faced by Muslim women in the UK within existing mental health services, often stemming from a lack of respect for their cultural and religious values. To bridge this gap, the authors introduce YAQIN, a faith-sensitive digital intervention developed through a co-design approach with end users. YAQIN uniquely integrates an Islamic psychology framework into an AI-driven platform, featuring a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-powered chatbot and guided journaling to deliver anonymous, continuous, and culturally congruent support. User evaluations demonstrate that YAQIN effectively mitigates cultural mistrust, enhances therapeutic confidence, and is highly regarded for its emotional resonance and faith relevance. This work establishes an innovative paradigm for designing inclusive digital mental health solutions tailored to marginalized communities.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Psychology-informed user models and recommender systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

Mental healthcare services in the UK lack tools and resources to address the cultural needs of Muslim women, often leaving them feeling as though their values are pathologised and limiting trust and engagement [1]. Despite growing awareness of cultural competency, few interventions integrate Islamic frameworks into therapeutic support. This report investigates the design and evaluation of YAQIN, a co-designed AI-based application supporting culturally and faith-sensitive mental health engagement for Muslim women. With almost 1.9 million Muslim women in England in 2021, YAQIN responds to a gap in care [2]. It leverages AI\'s anonymity and continuous support through a faith-aware chatbot and guided journaling tool grounded in user-centred design and Islamic psychology. The YAQIN design research methodology comprised three stages: contextual investigation and literature review, user research with N=14 stakeholders including Muslim women and mental health experts, and prototype development informed by deductive thematic analysis, personas, journey maps, and design specifications. Evaluation involved a co-designed user study with five participants: four Muslim women and one mental health expert who reviewed therapeutic alignment and cultural sensitivity after using the chatbot prototype. Feedback focused on tone, faith relevance, emotional resonance, and the Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipeline enabling contextual continuity. Participants highlighted YAQIN\'s ability to bridge cultural gaps in trust and therapeutic confidence. Feedback included suggestions of including linguistic diversity and routine-based guidance. This project demonstrates how culturally sensitive AI can improve mental healthcare accessibility and trust for marginalised communities and highlights the potential of faith-integrated technology in healthcare innovation.

Problem

• cultural sensitivity
• mental healthcare
• Muslim women
• faith-integrated support
• healthcare accessibility

Innovation

• culturally sensitive AI
• faith-integrated technology
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation
• Islamic psychology
• co-design