What it means
روانپزشک (ravanpezeshk) is the Persian word for psychiatrist. It names a medical doctor, someone who finished medical school then specialized in mental illness, who can prescribe medication, admit patients, and diagnose clinical conditions. The word is built from روان (ravan, soul or psyche) and پزشک (pezeshk, doctor). It is a clean Pure Persian compound, the Farhangestan-approved replacement for the older Arabic-flavored طبیب اعصاب (tabib-e a’sab, nerve doctor).
Do not confuse ravanpezeshk with روانشناس (ravanshenas, psychologist). The pezeshk part is the load-bearing piece. Pezeshk means MD. A ravanpezeshk has prescription authority. A ravanshenas does not.
How to use it
You use ravanpezeshk when you mean the medical specialist, the person you see for medication, hospitalization, or a clinical diagnosis. Iranian families increasingly use the word openly. Two decades ago it sat under a stigma cloud, now urban professionals refer their friends to one without lowering their voice.
baradaram ravanpezeshk-e khoobi tu Tehran sorāgh dāre.
My brother knows a good psychiatrist in Tehran.
برادرم روانپزشک خوبی تو تهران سراغ داره.
ravanpezeshk barāsh dāru taǰviz kard.
The psychiatrist prescribed medication for her.
روانپزشک براش دارو تجویز کرد.
Where it comes from
روان (ravan) is Middle Persian, attested in Pahlavi texts as ruwān, the soul or animating self, cognate with Avestan urvan. پزشک (pezeshk) is also Middle Persian, bēšazk, the healer. The compound is modern. Farhangestan-e Zaban-e Farsi coined ravanpezeshk in the 20th century as part of the Pure Persian Movement push to replace mixed Arabic-Persian medical vocabulary with native Persian compounds. It stuck. Today every Iranian medical license, every hospital signboard, every insurance form uses ravanpezeshk.
In our voice
If a friend in Iran tells you they are seeing a ravanpezeshk, that is significant. The visit costs real money, the diagnosis stays in records, and the stigma, though weaker than before, is real. Treat the word with the seriousness it carries. Iranian psychiatry has produced respected scholars and a sizable clinical literature in Persian, and the public hospitals in Tehran, Shiraz, and Mashhad run busy psychiatric wards. Outside the medical bubble, though, families still sometimes split between sending a relative to a ravanpezeshk or sending them to a traditional healer or a religious counselor first. The word names a profession that exists fully, but choosing it remains a real social decision.
References
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