Mohammed T. Abou-Saleh

16 PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRYaffective, paraphrenic and schizo-affective illnesses were largelymy own work, but many of the junior psychiatrists madecontributions and they and clinical psychologists, as well as socialworkers, instigated their own researches. Many later made a namefor themselves, and some became leading psychogeriatricians.Among them were Tom Arie, the late L. K. Hemsi, David Jolley,Robin Jacoby, David Kay, Kenneth Shulman and, last butcertainly not least, Raymond Levy. After the Bethlem-Maudsleyhad accepted a district commitment and the admission ofinvoluntary (sectioned) patients, Raymond Levy and my successor,Klaus Bergmann (not a Bethlem trainee), managed to movethe Geriatric Unit to the Maudsley, so much closer to the patients’family homes. Raymond Levy succeeded in establishing anAcademic Department of Old Age Psychiatry, which hascontinued to conduct research into the dementias of late life,that most important subject, previously neglected on account ofadmission restrictions before the hospital abandoned its ivorytower to accept a district commitment. With similar developmentselsewhere, psychogeriatrics became a world movement, and SirAubrey Lewis would be pleased.REFERENCES1. Post F. Some problems arising from a study of mental patients overthe age of sixty years. J Ment Sci 1944; 90: 554–652. Lewis AJ, Goldschmidt H. Social causes of admission to a mentalhospital for the aged. Sociol Rev 1943; 365: 86–98.3. Lewis AJ. Ageing and senility: a major problem of psychiatry. J MentSci 1946; 92: 150–70.4. Post F. Geriatric Unit (a report on progress made, with specialreference to 1952). Bethlem Maudsley Hosp Gaz 1955; 1: 270–1.