Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 118. doi: 10.1192/pb.24.3.118
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 118
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Stafford-Clark
Formerly Director of the York Clinic at Guy's
James Willis
David Stafford-Clark, who died aged 83, was in his day, one of the foremost
psychiatrists in the country. He was Physician-in-Charge of the Department of
Psychological Medicine and Director of the York Clinic at Guy's, as well as
Consultant at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. But this
summary sells him short: David brought to psychiatry a lively intelligence,
humour, a lack of pomposity, but above all, an exemplary compassion and
concern for the individual. His contribution to clinical psychiatry contrasted
with the therapeutic inertia and detachment that pervaded psychiatry at the
time. He was also a gifted teacher. His clinical lectures at Guy's were always
packed to the doors by students who regarded most lectures as risible.
He qualified in medicine in 1939 at Guy's. He had been advised to study
medicine there by the family doctor, after leaving Felsted - and that was
that. He remained loyal to Guy's for life.
During the war he served as a doctor in the RAF, attaining the rank of
Squadron Leader. His wartime career included being one of the last members of
the British Expeditionary Force to leave France, in a collier, one jump ahead
of the Wehrmacht. He returned to Bomber Command, where his work on morale in
air crews stimulated an interest in psychiatry which had started in his
student days, when he was appalled by seeing mental hospital patients paraded
in front of medical students like freaks in a circus in the name of
‘teaching’. In addition, he became a medical parachutist. He
volunteered and flew as a doctor, was mentioned twice in dispatches, and
inhaled poison gases at Porton Down. The legacy from this was asthma, from
which he suffered for the rest of his life, culminating in a near fatal attack
which led to early retirement on health grounds, at the summit of his
career.
He had returned to Guy's after the war, and later started his postgraduate
training in psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, where he caught the eye
of Sir Aubrey Lewis. After a spell as a teaching Fellow at Harvard and the
Massachusetts General Hospital, he returned to the Maudsley as Chief Assistant
to the Professorial Unit. During this period he carried out
electro-encephalogram studies on alleged murderers on remand; work which
high-lighted the unrecognised incidence of psychiatric disorder and epilepsy
in those potentially facing the death sentence by hanging. A career in
forensic psychiatry was aborted by his becoming the Director of the York
Clinic at Guy's. Sir Aubrey Lewis had long since spotted that David was a
populist, and he recommended him to Sir Allen Lane of Penguin, as being
someone best qualified to write Psychiatry Today, the highly
successful book which was translated into 12 languages.
David's ability to communicate and clarify the supposed arcana of
psychiatry was masterly, and he inspired enthusiasm for the speciality among
students and doctors deterred by its obscure terminology and vagueness. His
interest and influence were founded on simple clinical principles. For David,
psychiatry was a speciality never to be divorced from medicine. It should be
practised in the general hospital away from the isolation of the mental
hospital: when psychiatry left medicine, it ceased to be psychiatry. Proper
history-taking and examination and assessment of the person's mental status
were summarised in a clinical formulation aimed at dealing with and relieving
the patient's distress. David encouraged students to develop a proper concern
for the relief of human suffering. These concerns took precedence over lofty
generalisation and speculation about the relevance of social and obscure
psychological factors. Regard for, and empathy with, the individual and their
problem and how that person is feeling, was, for David, where psychiatry must
start and end. He was against the prevailing teaching hospital ethos of tweedy
philistinism in which psychiatry was regarded with poorly disguised contempt.
David did much to dispel this in a positive fashion, by encouraging the
practice of a medically-based discipline founded on compassionate
understanding and respect for the patient. His ability to communicate this
philosophy of medicine and psychiatry found expression in radio and
television, in particular in the television series Lifeline, which
ran from 1957 to 1963. It was a pioneering endeavour in the communication of
the problems of psychiatric and allied disorders, and set an example at a time
when public presentations were regarded as revolutionary, if not dangerous, by
the more conservative members of the profession. The ensuing popular appeal
incurred him ill-feeling and envy among certain members of the medical
establishment. But David could handle criticisms of his public appearances,
his exuberant personality, and his espousal of controversial causes. David's
concerns spread into areas which counted for little among those
anti-intellectual colleagues who found some of his opinions not to their
liking. He had better things to do than worry over such trivia. He was always
fun to be with.
In the York Clinic, he promoted an atmosphere in which everyone felt
enthusiastic; a feeling that spread throughout the staff, producing a
community atmosphere that will be long remembered. He leaves a widow, Dorothy,
whom he married in 1941, a daughter and three sons, one, Max, the renowned
theatre director.
