Ethical Importance of Psychological Capability for Affordability of Hajj

The most important conditions necessitating Hajj are financial affordability, physical, and psychological capacity. Most persons who become bound to make the Hajj ignore the psychological capacity. Each year many persons lacking psychological capacity, go on Hajj and cause other mentally qualified people deprived of travel. A number of these pilgrims undergo medical treatment or are hospitalized during their travel and some of them are returned back to the country. No study has been carried out so far on these special conditions, psychological capacity, of Hajj. In quantitative part of this study, information of all records existing in the medical center of Hajj during 2012-2015 was extracted. The information was analyzed by assistant psychiatrist, professor, and physicians based on DSM-IV-TR standards. In qualitative part, systematic information was extracted from authorities of Hajj organization. From studied records related to psychiatric disorders, cases of schizophrenia and psychotic disorders were identified as lacking mental and psychological capacity. The results of this study showed that about 16% of the people with mental disorders such as schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, and that their dispatch to Hajj's journey was in contradiction with the principles of jurisprudence and ethics. This study can be regarded as a religious and ethical guide for identifying the examples of people who have been deprived, to help policy makers of the Hajj system to apply more strict monitoring of the dispatch of pilgrims, eliminating the time spent by other pilgrims and defusing national pride, and helping to replace eligible people instead of those who are not qualified for Hajj.