{"id":2219238,"date":"2024-04-12T10:02:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/revolutionary-suicide-ucla-psychiatrists-cheer-self-immolation-in-leaked-audio\/"},"modified":"2024-04-12T10:04:17","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:04:17","slug":"revolutionary-suicide-ucla-psychiatrists-cheer-self-immolation-in-leaked-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/revolutionary-suicide-ucla-psychiatrists-cheer-self-immolation-in-leaked-audio\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA psychiatrists applaud self-immolation in leaked audio titled &#8216;Revolutionary Suicide."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Frevolutionary-suicide-ucla-psychiatrists-cheer-self-immolation-in-leaked-audio%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2219238&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The UCLA psychiatry \u200bdepartment&#8217;s\u200b recent talk at the\u2064 medical school glorifying self-immolation as\u2063 a \u200bform of \u200d&#8221;revolutionary suicide&#8221; raised\u2062 concerns \u2063and deepened a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-lincoln-project-shares-personnel-address-with-liberal-election-groups\/\" title=\"The Lincoln Project Shares Personnel, Address With Liberal Election Groups\">public relations crisis<\/a>. The presentation, titled &#8220;Depathologizing \u200dResistance,&#8221; \u2062challenged traditional medical \u2062norms and sparked controversy within the medical community. The \u2063doctors&#8217; arguments and statements \u2063have prompted a \u200cdebate about the glorification of self-harm.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>UCLA medical school\u2019s psychiatry department hosted a talk earlier this month that glorified self-immolation as a form of &#8220;revolutionary suicide,&#8221; raising concerns from prominent doctors and deepening a public relations crisis that has embroiled the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-crt-nonsense-has-infiltrated-medical-schools\/\" title=\"The CRT Nonsense Has Infiltrated Medical Schools\">elite medical school<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The talk, &#8220;Depathologizing Resistance,&#8221; was delivered on April 2 by two psychiatry residents at UCLA, Drs. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa, under the auspices of the department\u2019s diversity office and UCLA\u2019s Health Ethics Center, according to slides and emails obtained by the <i>Washington Free Beacon<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>The remarks centered on the suicide of Aaron Bushnell, the U.S. serviceman who set himself on fire in February to protest U.S. support for Israel\u2014or, as Izar put it, &#8220;indigenous Palestine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bushnell had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/aaron-bushnell-death-report-reveals-police-call-about-mental-distress-1873386\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">shown signs<\/a> of mental distress before he died,<b> <\/b>according to a police report, and was widely seen as a casualty of mental illness. The presentation argued he could also be considered a &#8220;martyr,&#8221; a man in full control of his mental faculties who had responded rationally to a &#8220;genocide&#8221; unfolding thousands of miles away.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes, he carried a lot of distress,&#8221; Izar said, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oPznfckQxG8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">audio of the talk<\/a> reviewed by the <i>Free Beacon<\/i>. &#8220;But does that mean the actions he engaged in are any less valid?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Isn\u2019t it normal, she continued, &#8220;to be distressed when you\u2019re seeing this level of carnage&#8221; in Gaza?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"50 min slideshow Seg 3_V2\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eTWbVCNM4yg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The talk reflects the erosion of what was until recently a bedrock medical norm: from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychiatry.org\/news-room\/apa-blogs\/apa-resource-on-suicide-and-media#:~:text=Contagion%20phenomenon%20refers%20to%20situations,phenomena%2C%20the%20APA%20resource%20notes.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American Psychiatric Association<\/a> to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aacap.org\/App_Themes\/AACAP\/docs\/practice_parameters\/suicidal_behavior_practice_parameter.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry<\/a>, all professional mental health bodies warn against glorifying self-harm, lest it inspire others to harm themselves.<\/p>\n<p>That norm has weakened with the rise of activist doctors and their capture of medical organizations. Pediatricians got a vivid taste of the brave new world in 2022 when Morissa Ladinsky, in an address at the American Academy of Pediatrics\u2019s annual conference, <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/coronavirus\/the-hijacking-of-pediatric-medicine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">praised a transgender teenager<\/a>, Leelah Alcorn, for &#8220;boldly \u2026 ending her life&#8221; and leaving a suicide note that &#8220;went viral, literally around the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ladinsky, a pediatrician at the University of Alabama Children\u2019s Hospital, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outcarehealth.org\/provider\/listing\/morissa-ladinsky-md\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">leads<\/a> the clinic\u2019s &#8220;Gender Health Team.&#8221; She later apologized for her remarks, saying she hadn\u2019t meant to glorify self-harm.<\/p>\n<p>At UCLA, Izar and Moustafa, who are practicing psychiatrists, argued that self-immolation is a reasonable response to geopolitical events and that the taboo against it serves &#8220;the interests of power.&#8221;<b> <\/b>By &#8220;perpetuating the stigma of self-immolation,&#8221; they said, psychiatrists &#8220;discredit&#8221; resistance to &#8220;power structures&#8221; like &#8220;colonization,&#8221; &#8220;homophobia,&#8221; and &#8220;white supremacy,&#8221; framing legitimate acts of protest as signs of psychiatric dysfunction.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"50 min slideshow Seg 2\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KecCadQqURk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Psychiatry pathologizes non-pathological \u2026 reactions to a pathological environment or pathological society,&#8221; Moustafa said. &#8220;It\u2019s considered illness to choose to die in protest of the violence of war but perfectly sane to choose to die in service of the violence of war.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"50 min slideshow Seg 1_V2\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gS-FYtVWnVg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Their contentions undercut official guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which<b> <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/volumes\/73\/su\/su7302a3.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">warns<\/a> that &#8220;bestowing honor and admiration&#8221; on suicide victims can inspire others to take their own lives.<\/p>\n<p>That guidance &#8220;was certainly violated by the presenters,&#8221; said Elliot Kaminetzky, a psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders and reviewed audio of the talk at the <i>Free Beacon<\/i>\u2019s request.<\/p>\n<p>The stigma against self-immolation, Kaminetzky added, is one reason why Western countries see so little of it. &#8220;This is a good thing,&#8221; Kaminetzky said. &#8220;For mental health professionals to encourage removing the stigma is reckless&#8221; and could &#8220;lead to an increase in the number of individuals who protest in this tragic and horrifyingly painful fashion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sally Satel, a psychiatrist at Yale Medical School, said the talk itself was unlikely to inspire copycats,\u00a0drawing a distinction between suicide and &#8220;cataclysmic protest.&#8221; But she agreed with Kaminetzky that destigmatizing self-immolation could increase its prevalence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The more a culture venerates that kind of behavior as honorable,&#8221; Satel said, &#8220;the more we are likely to see additional examples.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a slide titled &#8220;Call to Action,&#8221; which summarized the takeaways from the lecture, Izar and Moustafa told attendees to &#8220;cultivate safe spaces&#8221; for their patients. Neither doctor responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Izar and Moustafa\u2019s talk is the latest lecture to rock UCLA medical school, which hosted Lisa &#8220;Tiny&#8221; Gray-Garcia, a self-described &#8220;poverty scholar,&#8221; as a guest speaker in its mandatory &#8220;structural racism&#8221; course in March. Garcia <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/campus\/ucla-med-school-requires-students-to-attend-lecture-where-speaker-demands-prayer-for-mama-earth-leads-chants-of-free-palestine\/\">led<\/a> the class in chants of &#8220;Free, Free Palestine,&#8221; derided the &#8220;crapitalist lie&#8221; of private property, and, in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KOOqAHLuSMQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">audio clip<\/a> that has since gone viral, had students kneel and pray to &#8220;mama earth.&#8221; The spectacle followed news that UCLA had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/ucla-school-of-medicine-antiracism-course-do-no-harm-office-of-civil-rights-8143c3ae\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">divided its medical students<\/a> into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ucla-med-school-requires-students-to-attend-lecture-where-speaker-demands-prayer-for-mama-earth-leads-chants-of-free-palestine\/\" title=\"UCLA Medical School mandates students to attend a lecture where the speaker calls for prayer for 'Mama Earth' and leads chants of 'Free Palestine.\">race-based discussion groups<\/a> and assigned them readings on &#8220;indigenous resistance,&#8221; &#8220;decolonization,&#8221; and &#8220;settler colonialism.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Such jargon was peppered throughout Izar and Moustafa\u2019s talk. One slide asserted that psychiatry has &#8220;weaponized tools of colonization, racism, anti-blackness, homophobia, and various tools of oppressions.&#8221; Another told psychiatrists to &#8220;embed your practice with an anti-colonial lens&#8221; and &#8220;recognize that mental health is intimately tied to liberation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>At one point, Izar castigated statements made by various medical bodies, including the American Psychiatric Association, about Hamas\u2019s October 7 rampage through Southern Israel, saying they had &#8220;centered the suffering of one group of people&#8221;\u2014Jews\u2014without discussing the &#8220;trauma&#8221; Palestinians had faced &#8220;at the hands of colonizing forces for 75 years.&#8221; That remark drew blowback from Vivian Burt, an emeritus psychiatry professor at UCLA, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/live\/mtmJBNgsqwQ?si=mZpNR9hr5fpW2Kt_&#038;t=831\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">testified about the lecture<\/a> at a meeting of the University of California Board of Regents on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is but the latest and most grotesque example of how anti-Semitism has been allowed to metastasize at UCLA,&#8221; Burt said. &#8220;I implore the Regents to act for the safety of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as those in our care as healthcare professionals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>UCLA did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>The talk, which was streamed over Zoom and open to all psychiatry residents and faculty, argued that concerns about copycat suicide are selective and politically loaded, using former president Barack Obama\u2019s praise of Mohamed Bouazizi\u2014the Tunisian street vendor who helped jumpstart the Arab Spring when he self-immolated in 2010\u2014as an example.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We praise people who do it over there,&#8221; Izar said. &#8220;But when it happens here, not so much.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The talk also drew a distinction between Eastern and Western cultures, arguing that the Global South tends to view &#8220;protest suicide&#8221; as honorable and &#8220;heroic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s true that self-immolation is more acceptable outside the West, Kaminetzky said. And it\u2019s true that Americans have greeted certain acts of self-immolation, including Bouazizi\u2019s, with more fanfare than Bushnell\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>But the divergent reactions don\u2019t necessarily reflect a double standard, Kaminetzky said. Mental illness, after all, is often characterized by a disregard for social norms. Since those norms vary across cultures, Kaminetzky argued, a behavior that indicates mental illness in one country may not indicate it in another.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Given that self-immolation is not part of Western culture, individuals in the West who choose to protest by ending their life likely have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/violent-sex-offender-awarded-2-5-million-settlement-because-prison-denied-gender-surgeries\/\" title=\"Violent Sex Offender Awarded .5 Million Settlement Because Prison Denied Gender Surgeries\">multiple mental health<\/a> and other challenges,&#8221; Kaminetzky told the <i>Free Beacon<\/i>. &#8220;I would not make the same assumption for individuals in Tibet&#8221;\u2014where many monks have self-immolated in protest of China\u2014&#8221;though I would discourage it for them as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Toward the end of their talk, Izar and Moustafa brought up the Goldwater Rule, which states that psychiatrists should not comment on the mental health of people they haven\u2019t evaluated. The rule, codified in the American Psychiatric Association\u2019s Principles of Medical Ethics, was repeatedly flouted during the Trump years as psychiatrists <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/psychiatrists-submit-warning-trumps-mental-health-deteriorating-2019-12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pontificated<\/a> from afar about the former president\u2019s mental state.\t<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"50 min slideshow Seg 4\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1iiE5jsjrXQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the same way that we shouldn\u2019t be commenting on political candidates running for president,&#8221; Izar said, the Goldwater Rule &#8220;raises the question of what authority do we have as psychiatrists to publicly comment upon instances of revolutionary suicide and other acts of resistance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this month, UCLA&#8217;s psychiatry department hosted a talk glorifying self-immolation as &#8220;revolutionary suicide,&#8221; titled &#8220;Depathologizing Resistance.&#8221; This sparked concerns among top doctors and worsened a PR crisis at the prestigious medical school. The talk, given by UCLA psychiatry residents Drs. Ragda and&#8230; (text limit reached)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":2219239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/MixCollage-12-Apr-2024-08-34-AM-8937.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2219238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/MixCollage-12-Apr-2024-08-34-AM-8937.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2219238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2219239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2219238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2219238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2219238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}