Political abuse of Iranian psychiatry and psychiatric services

Resurgent trends in punitive psychiatry in the Russian Federation

“…Beyond the Russian Federation, concerning patterns are transpiring elsewhere, like Iran, where psychiatry is being misused to reform “anti-social behaviours” contravening state-sponsored ideologies, notably against women. 7 Separately, albeit under different circumstances, judicial rulings in Switzerland have potentially allowed for court-mandated therapeutic measures without a validated psychiatric diagnosis. 1 These troubling developments warrant extensive scrutiny.…”

Psychiatry in the service of repression

“…The governments labeling of protesters with mentally illnesses promotes their propaganda that the political convictions of the protesters are the consequence of a disturbed mind and hence cannot be taken seriously. The government has recently announced that it will send the children who were arrested, all of who were school students to the 'Correctional and Rehabilitation Center' to prevent them from becoming antisocial personality disorder (Jay, Mahdanian, Tavakoli, & Puras, 2022;Kabir, 2022aKabir, , 2022b. This label and stigma of having a mental illness weaken the credibility of protestors within their own community.…”