Iran sets up mental health clinic to ‘treat’ women who refuse to wear hijab

Iran has set up a specialist mental health clinic in Tehran where Iranian women who resist wearing the hijab are to be given treatment. 

The centre, called the Clinic for Quitting Hijab Removal, is the Islamic Republic’s latest attempt to quash female dissent that has swept the country since the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in 2022. 

Mehri Talebi Darestani, who will run the centre, said it “will be for the scientific and psychological treatment of removing the hijab, specifically for the teenage generation, young adults, and women seeking social and Islamic identity”. 

She said the project is focused on promoting “dignity, modesty, chastity, and hijab” and claimed that attendance would be “optional”. 

The clinic will be overseen by Iran’s Headquarters for Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil, the government body responsible for enforcing strict religious standards across society. 

The department is under sanctions by the UK and other countries for human rights abuses and its brutal sanctioning of women who do not adhere to Iran’s Islamic dress codes. 

It is led by Mohammed Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, who was directly appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Earlier this month, a university student from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran stripped to her underwear to protest against the demands that women wear the hijab. She was branded mentally ill and taken to a psychiatric facility. 

The anti-hijab movement gained traction after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody in Tehran in 2022. The 22-year-old had been arrested for not wearing her hijab properly.