مسعود رجوی صفحه آخر صدای آمریکا

Iran’s Suicide, a National Mental Health Epidemic

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Taking one’s own life has always been considered a sin and a taboo in the traditional society of Iran. Despite being an immoral act, the rate of suicide has been on the rise in Iran in the recent years. According to media reports, Iran’s suicide rate has climbed 17% in two years, with 10 Iranians on average taking their lives every day. This means an average of 4,000 people take their own lives in Iran every year! As reported by Asia News on March 11, 2006, “Suicide, especially among women, is the second leading cause of death in Iran. Suicide affects young people between ages 10 to 19 more than any other groups. Between 1999 and 2003, 60 children age 6 to 13 were admitted to hospital for attempting suicide.” This is very devastating to learn that kids as young as 6 years of age who just started their lives have attempted suicide in Iran.

Unfortunately, just like the reports of government executions, the news about suicide committed by the youths across the country are published on social media on a daily basis. For instance, on October 25, 2016, the Iranian Journalists’ Club published on its website the gruesome image of an 18-year-old woman who ended her own life by jumping off a bridge in the city of Dezful. The Journalist Club reported that the older sister of the same female victim also attempted suicide and fortunately survived.

In another instance, on November 7, an amateur Iranian photographer posted on his Facebook page the image of a 22-year-old man named Ali Negahban found hanging from a tree near an office building. It was said that Negahban ended his life due to his struggle with poverty and unemployment.

The above are only two of “too many” suicide reports in Iran, which have slipped through the mullahs’ regime censorship machine thanks to smartphones, the internet, and social media. In today’s Iran, the suicide epidemic is a national mental health crisis on the rise. Because the regime does not want to receive international criticism for its negligence in preventing the suicide epidemic, it censors any date, publications and news related to this subject.

As a mental health professional, I believe external factors such as poverty, unemployment and oppression must be blamed for suicidal thoughts and behaviors amongst Iranian youths, rather than internal factors such as genetically caused psychiatric symptoms including mania and auditory hallucinations, or untreated illnesses like depression and bipolar disorder.

I further believe the mullahs’ fascist regime is the major cause of suicide among the Iranian youths for taking their freedoms, employment opportunities, and hope for a better future away from them and giving them unemployment, oppression, poverty, hopelessness, sadness, and depression, in return.

Iran is an oil-rich country and has vast natural resources, which could be used toward promoting economic prosperity. For 37 years, instead of investing in the country’s economic growth, education, technological advancement, and development of job opportunities for the educated youth, the mullahs have spent billions of dollars of the country’s oil revenue on supporting terrorism and extremism in the region, including in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. .

Although social oppression has led to increasing suicides and other harsh conditions for the Iranian people, the possibility of major uprisings continue to pose a major threat for Tehran.

As long as the mullahs’ oppressive regime is in power, suicide and other social crises will continue in Iran. The ultimate solution to the suicide epidemic and all other problems in the country is the total destruction of the mullahs’ oppressive regime and its replacement with a national democratic government, which promotes the welfare and health, and wellbeing of Iranian citizens.

Iman Moridi, M.A.
November 11, 2016 

www.imanmoridi.com