Semen Gluzman

Semen Gluzman
Semen Fisheliovych Hluzman (born 10 September 1946, Kyiv) is a Ukrainian psychiatrist and human rights activist.
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 co-chairperson of the Babi Yar Committee and former dissident and political prisoner. He holds M.D. qualification.
Biography
His father was doctor of medical sciences Fischel Hluzman (1904 – 1987). In 1968, he graduated from the Kyiv Medical Institute. After graduation, Hluzman 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.
Semen Hluzman was the first psychiatrist in the Soviet Union to openly oppose Soviet abuse of psychiatry against dissenters. In 1971, Hluzman wrote an in-absentia psychiatric report on General Petro Hryhorenko who spoke against the human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. Hluzman came to the conclusion that Hryhorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hluzman was forced to serve seven years in labor camp and three years in Siberian exile for defending Hryhorenko against the charge of insanity. On 28 November 1977, Amnesty International added Hluzman to its list of 92 members of the medical profession who were imprisoned for their political beliefs. While in prison Hluzman and fellow inmate Vladimir Bukovsky jointly wrote A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents published in Russian, English, French, Italian, German, Danish.
In the 1980s, Hluzman (who is a Jew) turned down offers to migrate to Israel by "people sent from American synagogues" and even Soviet officials.
In 1991, Hluzman 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, Hluzman 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, Semen Hluzman 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.
Hluzman 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
Gluzman's publications
Books on Soviet psychiatry
The work in Russian was also published in: The work in English was published in:
Prose and poetry
Research papers in English without co-authors
Research papers in English with co-authors
Research papers in Russian without co-authors
The paper was also published in:
Research papers in Russian with co-authors
The paper was also published in
Research papers in Ukrainian
Articles, reports, interviews, chapters in books
1946 births
Living people
Physicians from Kyiv
Soviet Jews
Ukrainian Jews
Ukrainian psychiatrists
Psychiatry academics
Fellows of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
Soviet dissidents
Ukrainian dissidents
Soviet human rights activists
Ukrainian human rights activists
Writers from Kyiv
Ukrainian writers in Russian
Ukrainian non-fiction writers
Ukrainian medical writers
20th-century Ukrainian writers
21st-century Ukrainian writers
Soviet psychiatric abuse whistleblowers
Soviet prisoners and detainees
Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by the Soviet Union
Ukrainian prisoners and detainees