From stigma to status: Psychotherapy in Persian digital publics

Background: Modernity has resolved some problems while creating new ones. An increasing number of people turn to psychotherapy to cope with their daily struggles, and many have recently begun sharing their experiences with others on social media.Aims: This study investigates how Persian-speaking users of a major social media platform narrate, evaluate, and emotionally position their relationships with therapists in everyday discourse.Methodology: Drawing on ۱,۳۰۹ Persian-language posts from X spanning ۲۰۲۳ to ۲۰۲۵, the analysis traces how therapy is woven into vernacular routines, jokes, frustrations, and affective disclosures. Through a combination of sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and multi-label classification, twelve recurring thematic clusters are identified, ranging from long-term companionship and playful therapist–client interactions to economic conflict, cultural doubt, and comparisons with fortune-telling or religious guidance.Findings: The findings reveal an affective ecology marked by pragmatic positivity, ironic detachment, and substantial ambivalence. While nearly half of all posts are coded as positive, expressions of strong enthusiasm are rare, and critical or confused narratives remain prominent.Conclusion: The study conceptualises therapy talk as a form of mediated intimacy in which professional authority is continually negotiated through public micro-narratives. We argue that Persian-language social media users are not passive recipients of global therapeutic scripts, but active interpreters who reframe psychotherapy through culturally situated, morally inflected, and socially networked modes of speech; transforming what was once a source of stigma into a marker of status.

کلیدواژه ها:

affective publics ، digital mental health ، Persian-language media ، psychotherapy narratives ، therapeutic culture