Shilan Saqzi

News Center — Within Iran’s authoritarian structure, psychiatric institutions have shifted from therapeutic spaces to tools of silent exclusion and forced discipline, particularly for marginalized women and girls. Those who refuse to conform to the gendered, behavioral, or political norms imposed by the regime—including homeless women, survivors of violence, single mothers, rebellious girls, and even those with different ways of thinking—are left without support or protection and pushed out of society in the name of “mental health.”

Psychiatric facilities have become “spatial technologies of repression,” used to control women’s bodies whose presence the patriarchal political system cannot tolerate. This creates what can be described as “gendered political psychiatry,” where psychological distress is not treated as a condition requiring care, but rather as a justification for exclusion and erasure. In this space, class, gender, and political repression intersect, pushing women’s bodies into isolation simply because their “fault” is being “different.”

Analyzing this reality goes beyond critiquing a healthcare system; it exposes an intricate mechanism of social, political, and gender-based exclusion designed to silence women and remove them from public life.

Mental health as a tool for controlling women and marginalized groups

In Iran’s political and social system, what is labeled as “psychological care” effectively becomes a mechanism for social exclusion. Entire generations of women, youth, and marginalized groups are institutionalized not because of mental illness, but due to poverty, domestic violence, social rejection, or acts of silent resistance—disappearing behind high walls, far from the eyes of society and the state.

This reality represents not just a health crisis but a form of “biopolitical technology,” a negative governance strategy that relies on confinement and exclusion instead of treatment and rehabilitation. Failed policies, the collapse of public welfare systems, and the cultural stigma surrounding mental illness all become tools in a project designed to push “undesirable lives” to the margins—into institutions, and then into oblivion.

Here, psychiatric facilities turn into “living graves,” places where the different and the unwanted are buried out of sight. Women who have survived violence, youth who resist domination, and bodies that disrupt gender or class norms are subjected—under the banner of treatment—to a process of political and psychological sterilization. It is a silent tragedy: a modern form of exclusion without blood, without trials, without screams—only high walls and suffocating silence.

Silent violence behind institutional walls

In Iran, especially for women and girls, psychiatric institutions no longer function as therapeutic centers. They have become socio-political tools used for control, discipline, and the removal of what the regime views as “disruptive bodies.” Women and girls who defy social, gendered, or political norms—through their actions, words, or even psychological suffering caused by structural oppression—are confined to these institutions under the guise of mental illness, often with no possibility of release.

The religious-patriarchal political system in Iran has long treated women’s bodies as problems requiring strict control—from mandatory veiling to restrictions on public presence and behavior. Women who resist or fail to comply—such as runaway women, survivors of sexual violence, single mothers, or rebellious girls—are denied support and protection and instead pushed into psychiatric facilities. These institutions thus become a means of cleansing the public sphere of “undesirable” women.

Institutional repression and the erasure of care

Diagnosing mental disorders in authoritarian systems is inherently political. A person who thinks, writes, or behaves differently is not treated as someone in need of understanding, but reduced to a “case.” This reflects the tradition of political psychiatry seen in totalitarian regimes. In Iran, girls and women who are angry, dissenting, or marginalized are often excluded through labels such as mental instability, delusions, or behavioral disorders.

Access to high-quality, humane psychological care is a privilege reserved for elites. Middle-class women may seek private therapy, but poor and marginalized women—especially those homeless or living in remote areas—are typically institutionalized. Public psychiatry thus becomes a tool for managing poverty and “deviance,” not for healing.

Many of these facilities are located on the outskirts of cities, invisible to public scrutiny and media access. Women and girls sent there are cut off from social, family, legal, and political networks, becoming effectively “invisible”—with no voice, no advocate, and no institution defending them.

Treatment inside these centers relies on medication, punishment, and isolation—rather than dialogue, care, or empowerment. Women whose suffering is rooted in deep social wounds are sedated rather than healed, erased rather than reintegrated.

Thus, psychiatric institutions in the Islamic Republic are not responses to mental-health crises, but part of the crisis itself. Under the banner of “treatment,” they execute a systematic project of exclusion, repression, and depoliticization of marginalized bodies. Behind a façade of “mental health,” these centers enact a silent and continuous violence aimed at eliminating those whom the state deems unfit for society.

Towards justice: reclaiming mental health as a human right

For many marginalized women, psychiatric institutions are not spaces of healing but instruments of political and social exclusion. In the absence of fair services and amid a surveillance-driven mentality, mental health has become a tool for silencing women deemed “undisciplined” or “disruptive.”

Restoring justice and genuine care requires re-politicizing mental health, understanding it not as a means of control but as a human right—one that guarantees dignity, freedom, and the rightful place of women in society

 

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