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Semyon Gluzman

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Nationality
  
Ukrainian

Name
  
Semyon Gluzman

Fields
  
Psychiatry


Semyon Gluzman museumkhpgorgfilesphotos1113893000jpg

Native name
  
Semyon Fishelevich Gluzman

Born
  
September 10, 1946 (age 77) Kiev, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union (
1946-09-10
)

Citizenship
  
the Soviet Union (1946–1991)  Ukraine (1991–up to the present)

Institutions
  
Ukrainian Psychiatric Association

Known for
  
his participation in the struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union

Notable awards
  
distinguished fellowship of the American Psychiatry Association, honorary membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Geneva Prize for Human Rights in Psychiatry

Alma mater
  
Bogomolets National Medical University

Semyon Fishelevich Gluzman (Ukrainian: Семе́н Фі́шельович Глу́зман, Russian: Семён Фи́шелевич Глу́зман; born 10 September 1946, Kiev) is a Ukrainian psychiatrist and human rights activist.

Semyon Gluzman Appeal by Dr Semyon Gluzman for trauma services in Ukraine

He is also the president and founder of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association, founder of the American-Ukrainian Bureau for Human Rights, director of the International Medical Rehabilitation Center for the Victims of War and Totalitarian Regimes, a member of the Council of Experts under the Ukraine's Ministry of Labor and Social Policy. He also is сo-chairperson of the Babi Yar Committee, ex-dissident and ex-prisoner. He holds M.D. qualification.

In 1968, he graduated from the Kiev Medical Institute. After graduation, Gluzman started working in Ukrainian psychiatric hospitals and was offered a position at the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital in a city not far from the Black Sea.

Semyon Gluzman was the first psychiatrist in the Soviet Union to openly oppose Soviet abuse of psychiatry against dissenters. In 1971, Gluzman wrote an in-absentia psychiatric report on General Pyotr Grigorenko who spoke against the human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. Gluzman came to the conclusion that Grigorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Gluzman was forced to serve seven years in labor camp and three years in Siberian exile for defending Grigorenko against the charge of insanity. On 28 November 1977, Amnesty International added Gluzman to its list of 92 members of the medical profession who were imprisoned for their political beliefs. While in prison Gluzman and fellow inmate Vladimir Bukovsky jointly wrote A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents published in Russian, English, French, Italian, German, Danish.

In the 1980s Gluzman (who is a Jew) turned down offers to migrate to Israel by "people sent from American synagogues" and even Soviet officials.

In 1991, Gluzman founded the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association (UPA) as an independent mouthpiece and created a commission to address grievances about civil rights violations by mental health administrators.

In recognition of his courage and commitment to ethical psychiatry, Gluzman was given the title of a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatry Association and the title of an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1980.

In 2008, Semyon Gluzman was honored with the Geneva Prize for Human Rights in Psychiatry presented to him at the XIV Congress of the World Psychiatric Association in Prague for exceptional courage and adherence to ideals of humanism, for renunciation of using psychiatry against political dissidents as well as for dissemination of ethical principles during the reform of mental health service in Ukraine.

Gluzman coauthored many research papers covering psychiatry in Ukraine, the health consequences of the Chornobyl accident, their risk perceptions, suicide ideation, heavy alcohol use, nicotine dependence, intimate partner aggression.

References

Semyon Gluzman Wikipedia