A Postscript and Postmortem on the Suicide of Aaron Bushnell
[ad_1] Hyppolyte de Saint-Rambert / Wikipedia In my last blog post, I wrote about the practice of self-immolation from a historical and psychological perspective in an effort to help us understand the recent death of US airman Aaron Bushnell, who set himself on fire on February 25, 2024 to protest the Israel-Gaza War. My general conclusion about self-immolation—if not about Bushnell, given lack of information about him and the obvious fact that I have not examined him as a psychiatrist—is that it is often an act of both protest and suicide, with the latter requiring a closer look at why someone would be willing to end their life for a cause. Other opinions since his death have been predictably split in a more black-and-white fashion between those calling him a hero for his powerful statement of protest against genocide in Gaza and those claiming that his suicide was evidence of mental illness. As it happens, I recently wrote about how a similar “blame” or “explain” framework is often used to opine about mass shooters and …
