In Memoriam: Psychiatrists Devoted to Child Mental Health

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

As the mental well-being of our youth has seemingly deteriorated slowly but surely over at least the last decade, and questions about their use of social media increase, competent psychiatrists are needed more than ever. The loss of child psychiatrists in these eulogies will emphasize the increased need, but fortunately they all dedicated themselves to training their successors.

As usual, information about their lives was obtained from public obituaries and my personal knowledge of them.

Anthony (“Tony”) Meyer, MD

I knew Tony well, as we worked in the same broad academic system of the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) for about 25 years. In fact, in my first recruitment visit in 1989, he was the featured speaker at a residency event. While I become director of development for the psychiatry department at MCW, Tony became medical director of Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital from 1990-2017. For many years, he was also director of MCW’s Child and Adolescent Fellowship program.

Various brief eulogy comments were illustrative of who he was:

“Your father saved my child.”

“. . . he was an unabashed showman, as colorful as his ubiquitous bow ties.”

“Tony knew how to read a room.”

“From his mother, he got a raucous sense of humor and a rich imagination.”

After we both retired from MCW, he reassuringly said to me: “We’ve had a good run, Steve.” Tony died at the age of 87 on July 14, 2024.

C. Barr Taylor, MD

Eating disorders often develop during adolescence. For decades, Dr Taylor was a leader in setting up affordable, accessible, and evidence-based care for such disorders. A Stanford Medicine professor emeritus, he was an early proponent of digital interventions. His legacy was highlighted in the March 2024 issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Like Dr Meyer, he mentored many others in the field. An utmost tribute in this regard was that colleagues in a difficult situation often asked: “What would Barr do?”

He also had various interests outside of formal psychiatry, including painting, fly fishing, and our environment.

He died at the age of 78 on November 30, 2023.

John M. Rusk, MD

Dr Rusk was the long-term director of the Youth and Family Center at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Philadelphia from 1977-2000. He was known for his dedication to his patients, and from staying in one location, following many children throughout their entire lives. Early on, he also recognized that attention deficit disorder in children often had remnants still in adulthood. No wonder he was named Practitioner of the Year by the Philadelphia Psychiatric Society in 2008.

After his wife of 66 years died in 2023, he died about a year later at the age of 88 on August 28, 2024.

Child Psychiatrists

I had 6 months of training in child and adolescent psychiatry during my internship at the University of Southern California, but never went on to do a later fellowship. Nevertheless, that early experience with the complexity of child psychiatry, necessitating dealing with parents and family systems, let alone rapid developmental changes, left me with upmost admiration of such child psychiatrists.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.