Psychiatric Bulletin (2002) 26: 396-397. doi: 10.1192/pb.26.10.396-a
© 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2002) 26: 396-397
© 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Israel Kolvin
Previously Emeritus Professor, The Tavistock Clinic, London
Ian Goodyer
Israel Kolvin was one of a small group of medical practitioners who, in the
late 1950s, decided to specialise in child and adolescent psychiatry. Over the
next 4 decades ‘Issy’ Kolvin was to become one of the great
pioneers of academic child mental health and a leading figure in clinical
child and adolescent
psychiatry.
Issy was born in Johannesburg in 1929, the youngest of five children of
Jewish immigrants from Poland and Germany. After completing a degree in
philosophy and psychology at the University of Witwatersrand, he later
graduated in medicine. His interests in both psychology and medicine, together
with his exposure to child poverty and deprivation in his home country, led
him to seek a career in psychiatry. He undertook his postgraduate education
and clinical training in the UK and, in 1958, went to Edinburgh where he
gained valuable experience in general psychiatry and psychodynamic child
psychiatry. At that time, there were no formal training schemes in child and
adolescent psychiatry, so Issy obtained a senior registrar post in Oxford
under Christopher Ounsted, Medical Director of the Park Hospital for Children,
which was then one of the few places in the UK with an academic child
psychiatry unit. It was here that Issy conducted his first two research
projects: a description of aggression in adolescent delinquent boys and one of
the first major studies of childhood autism. He demonstrated that patients
with this condition had high rates of concurrent neurodevelopment difficulties
but these did not inevitably develop into schizophrenia. His work laid the
foundations for considering classical Kanner autism as a biological disorder,
in sympathy with a growing body of British research dispelling the myth that
autism was a childhood functional psychosis with no organic origins. In 1964,
he was appointed Physician-in-Charge of the Nuffield Psychology and Psychiatry
Unit in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Lecturer in Child Psychiatry at the
Department of Psychological Medicine, headed by Sir Martin Roth. He remained
in this consultant post for the next 27 years, turning the Nuffield into one
of the foremost university departments of child and adolescent psychiatry in
the world. His work was recognised with one appointment in 1977 to a personal
chair. Three of his many research and clinical successes over this time stand
out. First, and perhaps the most remarkable, was the unique study of
psychological interventions in the maladjusted child in schools, published as
a book in 1981, Help Starts Here. This, the first controlled trial of
psychological treatment in primary schools, proved that skilled conversational
treatment was effective in ameliorating emotional and behavioural
difficulties. The second was the longitudinal epidemiological investigations
of the intergenerational transmission of psychological disadvantage, carried
out through the 1000 families first identified and recruited in 1947 by Sir
James Spence at the Department of Child Health, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Kolvin
and colleagues traced a sub-sample of 300 families, then in their early 30s,
and identified continuities in the risk for deprivation in the offspring of
the original cohort, as well as protective factors against such a negative
outcome. These positive characteristics included a flexible behavioural style
in the face of adversity, social competence, parents who planned ahead and
provided physical and emotional care in spite of privations this may have
meant for themselves. These broad categories of psychosocial resilience have
subsequently been replicated with remarkable robustness in many other similar
studies worldwide. The third important success was in the clinical and
political challenge of chairing the Cleveland Inquiry into child abuse. This
most difficult task was carried out with a fairness and thoroughness that
brought him the respect of many in the community and led to significant
recommendations to central government regarding the roles and practice of
professionals and parents concerned in child protection.
In 1991, at the age of 60, he was appointed to the newly created John
Bowlby Chair in Child and Family Mental Health at the University of London,
based at the Royal Free Hospital and Tavistock Clinic. He was Chair of the
Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1994-1996. The photograph was
taken in 1996 at the Association's 3rd European Conference in Glasgow. Over
the 4 years, before his retirement, he engaged a clinically oriented group of
clinicians of international repute for psychodynamic practise in quantitative
methods of evaluation in therapy. On his retirement, he left a clinical
workforce engaged with modern scientific methods of examining clinical
practice and a thriving academic department that few thought possible in such
a brief period. He continued to engage in research and to publish through his
last illness. When asked what, looking back, he saw as his greatest
achievement, he said, without hesitation, his own family. He is survived by
his wife, Rona, whom he married 50 years ago, and his two children.
