By Kayhan Life Staff
Over the past year, Iranians have suffered the killing and brutal repression of tens of thousands of protesters in December and January, war with Israel and the United States, a collapsing economy and currency, unemployment, hyperinflation, Internet shutdowns and a deepening international isolation.
The Islamic Republic has also continued the practices for which it has become known in the last five decades: the psychological, social, and political repression of its citizens.
In an Oct. 13 interview with the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA), Dr. Amirhossein Jalali Nadoushan, spokesperson for the Iranian Psychiatric Association, discussed the consequences of these excruciating conditions on the Iranian population.
“Economic security, the quality of social relationships, the ability to predict the future, trust in institutions, access to services, working and housing conditions, and the degree of stability in life all affect mental health,” he said.
Jalali Nadoushan warned of “mental fatigue,” which he said impacted a wide portion of society, and explained: “As pressure and uncertainty persist, it is natural for mental fatigue, anxiety about the future, reduced feelings of control, and difficulty in long-term planning to heighten in some individuals.”
“If environmental pressures persist for a long time, not every instance of anxiety, fatigue, or decline in functioning can be attributed merely to an individual’s inability to cope. At the same time, emphasizing social factors does not mean the individual plays no role. Rather, mental health results from the interaction between the possibilities and limitations of the environment and the way each person faces them,” he noted.
“In repeated crises, the issue is not only the severity of each event,” he explained. “The issue is that the interval normally needed for recovery becomes shorter or disappears. A person is still coping with the aftermath of one event when they face uncertainty or another problem.”
“In such a situation, the line between a period of crisis and ordinary life fades. People may be forced to work, raise children, make important decisions, and maintain their relationships all at once, while part of their mental capacity is constantly spent assessing risk and adapting to change.”
He also stressed that when pressure and uncertainty persist, mental fatigue, worry about the future, a diminished sense of control, and a shortened planning horizon can be expected to increase among some people.
In July, Jalali Nadoushan indicated that Iranian society had entered a state of “social suspension” following the December 2025 and January 2026 protests, the war that immediately followed and is still ongoing, and the current economic crisis.
He explained that this does not mean society has come to a complete halt, but rather that a large part of the population does not know what vision of the future to base major life decisions on.
According to Jalali Nadoushan, the accumulation of economic, social, political, and military crises has also created a form of chronic stress. Under these conditions, society’s psychological safety has declined: the tolerance threshold falls, and a piece of news, a price increase, a rumor, or new tension can provoke reactions more intense than the event’s apparent magnitude. Such reactions are not the product of the latest incident alone, but of the accumulation of earlier, unresolved experiences.
Dr. Vahid Shariat, president of the Iranian Psychiatric Association, also issued a warning in April, after the first ceasefire was announced between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States: “In addition to the stress caused by war, economic and social pressures also aggravate psychological problems.”
“Following these severe crises, mental disorders in society, such as depressive and anxiety disorders that are directly linked to stress, become worse,” he added.
Shariat also pointed to critical medicine shortages and rising prices, and the stress they place on patients.
“Under wartime conditions, access to medicines in the country has declined somewhat, and more issues are emerging for which the necessary forecasts and measures must be made. In previous years, too, we saw announcements that a medicine was unavailable, and restocking it took months, even though there was no war. This situation is truly worrying,” he said.
The internet shutdowns, which over the past year and a half have continued for months at a time under the pretext of war and protests, have also intensified anxiety and depression in Iranian society.
The Iranian Psychiatric Association had earlier issued a statement warning about the consequences of this repressive measure: “In recent years, Iranian society has faced numerous economic, social, and psychological pressures. In such a situation, any widespread restriction, chronic instability, or multi-tiered and unequal patterns of access to the global internet may lead to increased psychological pressure, a feeling of being ignored, reduced public trust, and further erosion of social capital.”
The statement reads: “Stable, comprehensive, and reliable access to the global internet is, under today’s conditions, considered part of the essential infrastructure of citizens’ individual and social lives.”
“This access is not limited to public communication but is directly connected to education, employment, the provision and receipt of medical services, family communication, scientific and professional activities, and the maintenance of social bonds and a sense of presence in the contemporary world.”
Nevertheless, the psychological effects of the bloody repression of defenseless protesters during the December 2025–January 2026 protests, which left thousands dead or wounded, may have caused the greatest damage to the psyche of Iranian society.
A few days after the protests, the board of the Iranian Sociological Association, referring to the consequences of the government’s repression, wrote in a statement: “In recent days, the country has witnessed a broad wave of violence and the killing of thousands of citizens, events whose human, social, and political dimensions have left society in a deeply worrying state. Although this situation may seem shocking and sudden to many, it was in fact neither unprecedented nor unforeseeable.”
“In past years, analysts in the economic, political, and social fields repeatedly warned about the accumulation of crises and the consequences of continuing down the wrong paths, and cautioned that society would reach a point similar to what we are witnessing today. These warnings were largely met with structural indifference.”
The statement continued: “The possibility of managing the crisis solely through narrative-building and control of discourse has, in practice, vanished, and society has entered a cycle of escalating violence, a cycle that has cast serious uncertainty and fear over not only human security but also Iran’s prospects. The continuation of this trend has consequences beyond the short term and severely erodes the foundations of social solidarity and public trust.”
The board stressed the need to stop the violence and seriously rethink the paths taken, writing: “With deep sorrow and concern, the association regards the continuing widespread violence and the killing of several thousand people, a considerable portion of them defenseless civilians, as a deeply human and worrying catastrophe.”
“Beyond statistics and figures, the scale of these events is a sign of the repeated collapse of the fundamental principles of human dignity and a serious threat to social solidarity and the collective conscience.”
