Oral Histories
Interview of Henry H. Work
UCLA professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences. Head of the UCLA Department of Psychology’s Division of Child Psychiatry, a division of the Neuropsychiatric Institute.
- Subtitle:
- UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital: Henry H. Work
- Series:
- UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital
- Topic:
- UCLA and University of California HistoryScience, Medicine, and TechnologyUCLA Research Centers and Programs
- Biographical Note:
- UCLA professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences. Head of the UCLA Department of Psychology’s Division of Child Psychiatry, a division of the Neuropsychiatric Institute.
- Interviewee:
- Work, Henry H.
- Supporting Documents:
- Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
- Length:
- 5.75 hrs.
- Language:
- English
- Copyright:
- Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library.
- Series Statement:
- This series was made possible by support from the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital and documents the history of that institution.
- Abstract:
- Family history; decision to enter medicine; Hamilton College; extracurricular interests; Hamilton's premed program; admitted to Harvard University Medical School; internship at Boston Children's Hospital; developing interest in the psychological side of medicine; Bronson Crothers; World War II service in the United States Army Sixty-sixth Station Hospital; training at the School of Military Neuropsychiatry; running psychiatric units in North Africa and Europe; residency in pediatric psychiatry in 1945 at Cornell Medical Center; marriage to Virginia Codington; five years at the University of Louisville Bingham Child Guidance Clinic; the Commonwealth Fund; Work's children; Work recruited by the UCLA Department of Psychiatry in 1955; the opportunity to build a division of child psychiatry; conditions in the Department of Psychiatry in 1955; relationship with Camarillo State Hospital; clinical faculty; relationship of child psychiatry to pediatrics; opposition to building the Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) facility on campus; antipathy to psychiatry within the medical profession; Stafford L. Warren; founding faculty at the UCLA School of Medicine; the relationship to the Department of Psychiatry; differences in salary levels and perks between university-funded and California Department of Mental Hygiene-funded positions; planning for a child psychiatry ward in the hospital; provisions for caring for autistic children; planning for and recruiting staff; the NPI school; the evolution of children's psychiatric services in California since 1900; admissions criteria; George Tarjan and Pacific State Hospital; addition of the Mental Retardation Research Center; relationship to the Brain Research Institute; the removal of Norman Q. Brill as chairman of the Department of Psychiatry; conflict between psychiatrists and psychologists working in adult mental health; unrest among the staff; the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry votes no confidence in Brill's leadership; Work becomes acting chair of the Department of Psychiatry and George Tarjan acting director of the NPI Hospital; Sherman M. Mellinkoff's role in dismissing Brill; Louis Jolyon West; Work's research interests; affirmative action at NPI; relationship with the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School; involvement with drug-abuse prevention and re-habilitation programs; decision to leave UCLA; working for the American Psychiatric Association; NPI as a model for teaching psychiatry; the value of a centralized medical school/hospital complex.