Drugging Iranian girls into submission

Drugging Iranian girls into submission

From a PhD/lawyer:

yesterday I was in a seminar on psychiatry in Iran
(as a historian I write in history of psychiatry) ...

anyway: many of the women out protesting against forced hijab & attendant discrimination are being drugged with mood stabilizers & neuroleptics (anti-psychotics)
because they are allegedly "bi-polar".
This because they do things like : protest. have boy friend. disobey parents & the "morality police".

it's medieval misogyny combined with modern pharmaceuticals.

The roaring insider her indeed!

…

Seminar presenters/abstract

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354008846_Women_as_Troublemakers_The_Hard_Sociopolitical_Context_of_Soft_Bipolar_Disorder_in_Iran

“Women as Troublemakers”: The Hard Sociopolitical Context of Soft Bipolar Disorder in Iran

Gender differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, with higher prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders among women, have been the focus of much debate. In Iran, the adoption of the construct of Bipolar Spectrum Disorder (BSD) and of the concept of “soft bipolarity” has been associated with a large gender difference in rates of diagnosis. This paper discusses the gendered meanings of the diagnosis of BSD in Iran. In this qualitative study, we conducted 25 in-depth semi-structured interviews with prominent psychiatrists and university professors (7 female and 18 male) at six different universities in Iran and 37 in-depth semi-structured interviews with patients (23 female and 14 male, 18–55 years of age) who had received bipolar spectrum disorder diagnosis and treatment, excluding Bipolar I. Findings suggest that the high rate of diagnosis of bipolar spectrum disorder (i.e., subthreshold or soft bipolar disorder) among women in Iran is influenced by gender, sociocultural, political, and economic factors, as well as the diagnostic practices of biomedical psychiatry. The dominant biological psychiatry system in Iran has led many psychiatrists to frame sociopolitically and culturally rooted forms of distress in terms of biomedical categories like soft bipolarity and to limit their interventions to medication. This bioreductionist approach silences the voices of vulnerable groups, including those of women, and marginalizes discussions of problematic institutional and social power. To understand the preference for biomedical explanations, we need to consider not only the economic interests at play in the remaking of human identity in terms of biological being and the globalization of biological psychiatry, but also the resistance to addressing the sociocultural, political, and economic determinants of women’s mental suffering in particular contexts.

August 2021Culture Medicine and Psychiatry
DOI:10.1007/s11013-021-09743-4
Project: Global Mental Health

Authors:
Fahimeh Mianji at McGill University

Laurence J. Kirmayer at McGill University

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