Grow courage into madness. For undressing in the middle of the Azad University campus in Tehran on November 2, after being harassed about her outfit, Ahou Daryaei, a French literature student and mother of two children, was transferred to a “center specialized care”, according to a press release from the Iranian embassy in Paris. The images of this thirty-year-old woman, defying the regime in her underwear, barefoot, her long dark hair tumbling down her back went around the world. Two years after the death of young Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini, killed in detention for a poorly worn veil, she has become one of the new faces of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. But for the Islamic regime and its representatives, its gesture could be explained by “psychological fragility”.
Before her, there was actress Afsaneh Bayegan, sentenced to two years in prison in July 2023 and forced to go to a “psychological center” once a week to “treat her anti-family personality disorder” . She had appeared in public without covering her head. The actress Azadeh Samadi, for her part, was assigned by the judges an “antisocial personality disorder”, forced to undergo “therapy”. She had worn a hat rather than a veil at a funeral. Despite calls of healthcare professionals international organizations denouncing the regime’s exploitation of the field of psychiatry, there have been others. Roya Zakeri, Azam Jangravi… Women, but also men like Saman Yasin, a Kurdish rapper arrested for supporting anti-regime demonstrators and interned in the Aminabad psychiatric hospital in Tehran where he was allegedly tortured and forced to confess.
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“Hijacking and abusing psychiatric establishments, expertise or practice is not a new tactic in political systems that seek to annihilate the fundamental rights of individuals,” analyzes Dr Noshene Ranjbar, associate professor in Psychiatry at the University of Arizona School of Medicine. “Although it tends to disappear in our Western democracies, the instrumentalization of mental health is a common way of suppressing dissent in post-Islamic revolution Iran. But with the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement, these atrocities are made more widely known to the whole world.
Real mental health issues
“A method of totalitarian regime,” comments the professor of Franco-Iranian sociology and director of the Teaching, Documentation and Research Center for Feminist Studies at Paris Cité University, Azadeh Kian. “As in the Soviet era, this pathologization of the opposition aims to mark the difference between those who would be ‘normal’, therefore in agreement with the ideas of the Islamic regime, and the others.” Often women, she explains, because in Iran, “they are the main targets of the norms imposed by the patriarchal regime of the mullahs. Considered inferior, manipulable, a woman who disobeys – and there are more and more of them – can only be ‘crazy’ in the eyes of those in power.”
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According to Azadeh Kian, this hysterization of the opposition would have all the more serious consequences as mental health issues are real in Iran. “But due to an understandable fear of adding fuel to the mill of the regime and its pathologizing propaganda, little serious work is being carried out in the country on the impact of the repression suffered by Iranian men and women on their psychological state. However, being the targets of so much pressure and daily violence carries many scientifically established risks,” she warns. “In Iran, medical professionals and journalists are not allowed to openly study the contribution of the regime’s actions and policies to the increase in mental health problems and suicides among children and adults. This would amount to question the authorities and therefore potentially put oneself in danger,” adds Dr Ranjbar.
“Particularly vulnerable” women
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In its 2022 mental health report, the WHO recalled that people exposed to “adverse conditions” such as poverty, violence, or even inequalities are more likely to have mental health problems. . However, from the obligation to wear the hijab under penalty of violent repression, to parental authority, which is the prerogative of men, until divorce (the woman can request it if she received the right during her marriage) , including the right to custody, which the mother can only obtain until her child is seven years old, injustices and violence plague the lives of Iranian women. “On a professional level, it’s not much better. Employers prefer to hire men because they are the ones who are supposed to ensure the household’s standard of living. They therefore have no way of being in control of their lives.” specifies Azadeh Kian. In Iran, the proportion of educated women surpassed that of men for the first time in 2016 – of all science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates, 70% are now women. And yet, at the end of 2023, the Iranian Statistics Center reported an unemployment rate of 27.8% for women compared to 13% for men over the previous year.
Women are not the only ones to suffer the effects of the regime’s repression. “The mental health of Iranian women is obviously affected, as their behavior is imposed on them and their freedoms are violated on a daily basis. But, as in all countries where the population is systemically oppressed, the appearance of symptoms such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are not limited to women,” says Dr. Noshene Ranjbar. In short: human health and well-being also suffer. “Women and girls are treated so poorly, while men are deprived of healthy male role models, as the regime tolerates violence against women… All this leaves its mark on the meaning of men’s identity and mental health Many struggle to express or process their own emotions in healthy ways, develop substance abuse, anger issues, or become withdrawn in an attempt to cope. the situation. LGBTQIA+ people suffer even more, and most of the time in silence, because there is no room to step outside of the ‘approved’ boxes.
Disastrous health system
Relieve discomfort, but how and at what cost? “The Iranian health system, especially when it comes to mental health, is not equipped to deal with the explosion of the mental health crisis,” laments the psychiatrist. “Many people cannot afford to see a specialist, and they are unlikely to find the support they need in community clinics, where budgets are paltry and many doctors and other healthcare professionals health leave their jobs or leave the country altogether. In any case, faced with the pathologization of dissent by the regime, many Iranians are afraid to seek help. The situation therefore only gets worse as time goes on. that time passes and repression intensifies. This is why we are seeing more and more suicides among young people, and even more among women and LGBTQIA+ people.
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It is difficult to quantify this reality with precision. But a recent study titled “Characteristics of suicide attempts in Northwestern Iran: a five-year population-based survey”, published in the journal BMC Psychiatry in January 2024, established an upward trend in the incidence rate of suicide attempts in Ardabil province, northwest Iran, between 2017 (99.49 per 100,000 inhabitants) and 2021 ( 247.41 per 100,000 inhabitants). This is the highest rate among Middle Eastern countries. Meanwhile, the mullahs’ regime continues its sordid pathologization of dissident voices.
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