🇫🇷 Marseille
France
Mediterranean light that feels like home, in a city that is not easy
Marseille is the oldest city in France and resembles nowhere else in it: a port, loud, sunlit and Mediterranean. For many Iranians the social atmosphere here is closer to Iranian warmth than the north of France, and at the same time economic life is harder.
When the weather feels like home
Something that gets taken less seriously than it should: light affects mood. Many Iranians who spent years in Germany, the Netherlands or Scandinavia and then moved to Marseille say the first thing that changed was their sleep, and then everything else.
Marseille is also loud, direct and unrestrained. People talk at volume in the street, haggle in the market, and stand closer than they do in the north. For somebody from a high-contact Iranian culture that is more familiar. The feeling of needing to lower your voice, which is real in Berlin or Stockholm, is much weaker here.
Familiar is not the same as easy. Marseille is poorer than Lyon or Paris, unemployment is higher, and parts of the city struggle with serious problems. Cultural ease does not bring economic security with it.
The CMP is free, and the queue is long
France has public mental health centres whose services are free. That is a real advantage, particularly in a city where cost is the main barrier.
The problem is time. Getting an appointment at these centres takes months in many areas, and longer where the pressure is greatest.
In the private sector there are two categories: practitioners who charge the regulated tariff and are fully reimbursed, and those who charge more, where the difference is yours unless you have a good mutuelle. And for a private clinical psychologist there is no default reimbursement at all.
A small community in a large and varied city
Marseille is one of the most diverse cities in France, and its Iranian community is small. Unlike Paris there is no Persian school, no large association, no Iranian restaurant in every district.
Which means being foreign draws no attention here; in a city with this many roots you are one group among dozens. It also means being Iranian is less visible. Finding somebody for whom Nowruz means something takes real effort.
What Farsi-speaking newcomers in Marseille find hardest
Long queues at the public mental health centres
Tariff differences in the private sector and partial reimbursement
A weaker economy and higher unemployment than other cities
A small and scattered Iranian community
The gap between cultural ease and economic insecurity
The city's public image, and having to defend it constantly
No queue, at a price you know in advance
An online session with a Farsi-speaking therapist involves no public-centre queue and does not depend on tariffs or on your mutuelle. The price is clear before you book.
And in a city where the Farsi-speaking community is small, one weekly hour spent entirely in Farsi gives something back on its own.
Farsi-speaking therapists available to you
Every Emotral session is online, so these therapists — wherever in the world they live — are available to Iranians in Marseille, and you see the session time in your own local clock.
Lena Ebadi
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Individual Therapy (Adults)
Dr. Mojgan Shariatpanahi
Individual Therapy (Adults), Family Therapy, Couples Therapy
Dr. Jalal Khademi
PhD in Psychology, Depression, Anxiety & Panic Attacks
Dr. Fatemeh Mesgarian
Analytic Psychotherapy, Individual Therapy (Adults), Individual Counseling
Dr. Farzaneh Abroshan
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Schema Therapy, Group Therapy
Dr. Farzad Rasoulof
Schema Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)