Background
Gluzman, Semyon Fishelevich was born on September 10, 1946 in Kiev, Ukraine.
human rights activist psychiatrist
Gluzman, Semyon Fishelevich was born on September 10, 1946 in Kiev, Ukraine.
Doctor of Medicine, State Medical Institute, Kiev, 1970.
He also is сo-chairperson of the Babi Yar Committee, ex-dissident and ex-prisoner. He holds Doctor of Medicine qualification. Semyon Gluzman was the first psychiatrist in the Soviet Union who openly opposed Soviet abuse of psychiatry against dissenters.
In 1971, Gluzman wrote a 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 refusing to diagnose Grigorenko as having the mental illness.
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 1991, Gluzman founded the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association (Universal Postal Union) as an independent mouthpiece and created a commission to address grievances about civil rights violations by mental health administrators.
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.
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. 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.