Leon Eisenberg (August 8, 1922 – September 15, 2009) was an American child psychiatrist, social psychiatrist and medical educator who "transformed child psychiatry by advocating research into developmental problems". He received both his BA and MD degrees from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is credited with several "firsts" in medicine and psychiatry – in child psychiatry, autism, and the controversies around autism, randomized clinical trials (RCTs), social medicine, global health, affirmative action, and evidence-based psychiatry. He served as Chairperson of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Department of Child and adolescent psychiatry and Harvard Medical School until his retirement in 1988. After retirement, he continued as The Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine, Psychiatry Emeritus, and in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of the Harvard Medical School in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, until a few months before his death in 2009. Previously, he had taught at both the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University. He was chief of psychiatry at both Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston during formative periods in psychiatry for each institution.
Medical accomplishments Eisenberg completed the first outcome study of autistic children in adolescence and recognized patterns of language use as the best predictor of prognosis. Of the two first studies of the outcome of infantile autism, he reported the American study in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1956, and the UK study was reported in JCPP shortly afterward by Victor Lotter and Sir Michael Rutter. Eisenberg also studied and identified the use of rapid rea turn to school as the key treatment in the management of the separation anxiety in an underlying school phobia. He was principal investigator (PI) on the first grant from the Psychopharmacology Branch of NIMH for RCTs in child psychopharmacology. From a concern for evidence-based care, well before the phrase was coined, he introduced randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in psychopharmacology and showed that "tranquillizing drugs were inferior to placebo in the treatment of anxiety disorders, whereas stimulant drugs were effective in controlling hyperactivity." Eisenberg completed the first RCTs of psychiatric consultation to social agencies and the utility of brief psychotherapy in anxiety disorders. He published a forceful critique of Konrad Lorenz's instinct theory and established the usefulness of distinguishing "disease" from "illness". He has highlighted the environmental context as a determinant of the phenotype emerging from a given genotype, and from the late 1990s through 2006, he had been involved with developing conferences and resources for medical educators in various specialties that would help them incorporate into courses with their current and future students, the tidal wave of new information in genomics yet to puzzle future clinicians. This interest may have been encouraged by his stepson, Alan Guttmacher, then acting head of the National Human Genome Research Institute. For many decades, Eisenberg had criticized psychoanalysis from several platforms. The scientific contributions of Eisenberg include:
The first longitudinal follow-up of Leo Kanner's original cases of autism. A study that identified the roots of social phobia in parental anxiety. The first clinical trial in search of the effectiveness of psychiatric consultation in a social agency. The first randomized controlled trial in childhood psychopharmacology.. The first randomized controlled trial of stimulant drugs in adolescents. The first randomized clinical trial of brief psychotherapy. A forceful critique of Lorenz's theory of instincts and imprinting. An early statement of the distinction between "disease" (what doctors deal with) and "illness" (what patients suffer). A widely cited critique of the oscillation of psychiatry between brain-centered and mind-centered that approaches arguing for the integration of the two. A synthesis of the evidence on the importance of training primary care physicians to recognize and treat depression. Papers that highlight molding the brain structure by social experience. Publications putting inheritance in an environmental context as a determinant of risk and resilience. Eisenberg is known as "the father of prevention science in psychiatry" Eisenberg was proudest of the Diversity Lifetime Achievement Award he received in 2001 for his role in inaugurating affirmative action at HMS in 1968 and sustaining it as chairman of the Admissions Committee from 1969 to 1974. He regards that as his most important contribution to Harvard Medical School. He and his wife, Carola B. Eisenberg, former dean of students, first at MIT, then at Harvard Medical School, had been active with Physicians for Human Rights, which as an organization received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In mid-2009 (June 22, 2009), a Leon Eisenberg Chair in Child Psychiatry was named at Children's Hospital Boston. The first chairholder of the Leon Eisenberg Professorship in Child Psychiatry is David R. DeMaso, MD, HMS Professor of Psychiatry and Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Children's Hospital Boston. His autographical memoir was published posthumously by Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica.
Death Eisenberg died of prostate cancer at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 15, 2009.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
