Strong Opposition from Mental Health Associations to Parliament’s Proposal

Strong Opposition from Mental Health Associations to Parliament’s Proposal

Elimination of Specialists

From the highest responsible official to small yet influential positions, this is the current fate of a country that was supposed to have its leader go to Qom to teach, while the suited and tied professionals took over the country’s affairs. However, things did not turn out as they should have, and the clerics became the ones running the country. This interference has gone so far that now the clergy are supposed to delve into the rules of Freud and Jung, and with the parliament members’ proposal, the clergy will also receive counseling service licenses. Mohammad Hatami, the head of the National Psychology Organization, who is remembered as the censor of the national broadcaster in the 1980s, welcomed this parliamentary proposal and told the Hawzah News Agency that licenses were granted to 100 seminary scholars who happen to be good psychologists and counselors. These statements come while Reza Pourhasan, the dean of the Faculty of Psychology, criticized the parliament’s proposal, writing to Qalibaf that this proposal is illogical and immature.

Opposition from Health and Mental Health Associations

Additionally, the heads of six mental health associations wrote a letter to the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, criticizing the proposal by some parliament members to add a new clause to the National Psychology Organization’s law, and the independence of the Center for the Management of Seminaries in granting counseling licenses with a religious and Islamic approach, and demanded its removal from the parliamentary agenda.

Presence of Clerics in All Jobs

This is not the only institution where the Islamic Republic seeks to create jobs for them. Previously, many people expressed dissatisfaction with the presence of clerics in schools and sports. All this is while in March 2019, the Al-Zahra Counseling Unit was established and was among the first psychology centers initiated by clerics. This essentially means that the country’s revolutionaries do not believe in following legal procedures. Of course, there are those on the other side of the matter who strongly oppose this parliamentary proposal. Hojatoleslam Alamzadeh, the Deputy of Refinement, wrote in this regard that someone who wants to provide nutritional counseling must have studied nutrition, someone who wants to provide legal advice must be proficient in law, and therefore, it cannot be expected that graduates of theology provide legal or ethical counseling, nor can graduates of psychology be allowed to become real estate or nutrition consultants.

Someone who wants to provide nutritional counseling must have studied nutrition, someone who wants to provide legal advice must be proficient in law, and

حجت الاسلام عالم‌زاده معاون تهذیب

Each person is made for a specific job.

The presence of psychology counseling specialists in seminaries and guiding students in clerical matters is as inappropriate as the presence of legal experts in the realm of psychological issues, based on individual experiences and under the pretext of general knowledge. A clerical counselor, whom we refer to as a guiding mentor, should be able to establish the clerical identity in the seminary and in interaction with the student, convey the values and honors of clerical life, clarify the missions and mandates of the seminary, and make the student believe and steadfast in the glorious path of clerical life. Meanwhile, specialists in psychology counseling have not received specialized training for these matters and have no entry into them. The entry of such a person into this field is an unqualified, subjective, and at most based on individual experiences in the world of clerical life, where it is unclear whether they will succeed. Following the emergence of such issues, the campaign ‘I am a Psychologist, Opposed to Clerics Entering Counseling’ gained significant attention on social media.