Radio Farda:

Autocratic states have long used allegations of mental illness to discredit and imprison their critics.

In Iran, the authorities are increasingly branding women who violate the country's hijab law -- a key pillar of the Islamic system -- as psychologically unstable.

The move has coincided with unprecedented protests against Iran's clerical establishment and growing calls for greater social and political freedoms.

Experts say the Iranian authorities are employing punitive psychiatry -- the misuse of psychiatric diagnoses, treatments, and institutions to punish, control, or repress individuals -- to go after government critics.

"In countries like ours, being mentally ill is taboo, so the authorities use mental health allegations to raise public sympathy to justify their human rights violations," Medis Tavakoli, an Iranian psychotherapist and rights activists based in Europe, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda.

Go to link