Dr Sabina Strich BCh, DM, MRCPath, MRCP, FRCPsych

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Dr Sabina Strich, who died aged 90 on 23 May 2015, made pioneering discoveries in the 1950s on the effects of head trauma on the brain. While carrying out histopathological studies with Peter Daniel in Oxford, she identified characteristic changes to brain cells following severe

Ian Reid, who died tragically early at the age of 53 on 15 June 2014, played a leading role in British, especially Scottish academic psychiatry for over two decades. His particular interest was in electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which he regarded as a neglected, undervalued but highly effective form of treatment for depression and bipolar illnesses. He was passionate in his attempts to destigmatise ECT and to puncture the myths surrounding this controversial treatment, while highlighting that it was safe, effective and evidence based. He made successful bids to extend the work of his research team into the psychometrics of mood and at the time of his death, he and his team -through collaboration with the neuroimaging team in Aberdeen -were discovering exciting new biomarkers for mood disorder and the mode of action of ECT. Ian was a founding member of the Scottish ECT Accreditation Network and became Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Special Committee on ECT and Related Treatments in 2011.
He was also an effective advocate for the appropriate use of antidepressant medication. His collaborative research with primary care colleagues in Aberdeen into prescribing of antidepressant medication led directly to the withdrawal of a Scottish Government Health Efficiency Access Treatment target to reduce antidepressant prescribing. This research, quoted by the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Government, had widespread media coverage and led to a robust debate in the BMJ.
Internationally, he collaborated, for example, with colleagues in India, via the Trusted Mobile Platform for the Self-Management of Chronic Illness in Rural Areas.
He was a prolific contributor to the literature, editing and contributing chapters to the standard textbook on the subject, Fundamentals of Clinical Psychopharmacology, as well as being associate editor of Therapeutic Advances in

Correction
The expansion of the Foundation Programme in psychiatry. BJPsych Bulletin 2016; 40: 223-225. The title was incorrect in the print version of this article. The online version has been corrected post-publication. doi: 10.1192/pb.40.5.286a Psychopharmacology. He regularly reviewed papers for numerous other journals. Ian was a long-standing member and staunch supporter of the British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) and an elected member of BAP Council for 4 years. He contributed much to the BAP over the years, including teaching at educational events and supporting young colleagues presenting research findings at the annual meetings.
Highly active on the Scottish psychiatry scene, Ian was an expert panel member of the Scottish Medicines Consortium and of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network review group. He was also a member of the Healthcare Improvement Scotland Integrated Care Pathways for Mental Health steering group, which set national standards for healthcare in Scotland, and chaired their bipolar disorder subgroup.
Despite his national and international responsibilities, he kept his feet very much on the ground in Scotland, remaining active in Aberdeen. He never tired of telling his colleagues that he was one of the few academics north of the border who still led an adult community mental health team. He was also keen to remind them that this team worked within the most deprived catchment area in the city of Aberdeen. As an indication of the great respect with which he was held, his multidisciplinary team readily accepted tertiary referrals of patients with treatment-resistant affective disorder, despite the heavy workload.
Ian Reid was born and brought up in Dunfermline in Fife. His father John was a school head teacher and mother Rae a special education teacher. He was educated at Dollar Academy where he was a brilliant student, gaining entry at the age of 16 to the School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Aberdeen. After qualifying in medicine, he began his postgraduate training in psychiatry and early academic career in Grampian, with Professor George Ashcroft, before pursuing his higher clinical and academic training, including his PhD in cognitive neuroscience, in Edinburgh, with Professor Richard Morris. After returning to Aberdeen as a clinical senior lecturer, he moved to the University of Dundee as a new Chair of Psychiatry in 1995 at the very young age of 34. In Dundee, Ian became a major force for clinical service change and was involved in establishing community mental health teams and developing a state-of-the-art ECT service. Along with Professor Keith Matthews he established an innovative affective disorders service that provided a specialist clinical service as well as multidisciplinary training and research opportunities for junior psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses. In 2003 he succumbed to the lure of a return to Aberdeen to take up the Chair of Mental Health, a much-cherished post that he held until the time of his death.
Despite his sometimes crusty demeanour, Ian was an incredibly caring, supportive and knowledgeable colleague whose passion for patient care was almost unequalled. His commitment to teaching, training and mentorship was reflected in his ability to persuade non-psychiatric trainees to change their career path to psychiatry. Although at times he could be challenging to trainees and others, he was always driven by a core desire to do all he could to improve patient care and management of those with major mental illness. One of Ian's greatest personal strengths was an ability to connect with anyone at their level. A memory shared by almost all who met Ian would be of his black baggy jumper, well-worn leather jacket and omnipresent can of Coke Zero.
At a recent dedication ceremony at Royal Cornhill Hospital, during which the ECT suite was renamed the 'Professor Ian C. Reid Centre' in Ian's honour, one of his former patients described Ian as being 'the best man I ever knew', a sentiment shared by many who knew him.
Ian is survived by his daughter Alis, of whom he was incredibly proud, his second wife Linda Treliving, a highly respected psychotherapist, his two stepsons, Lawrence and Matthew and his sister Susan, a consultant radiologist. Dr Sabina Strich, who died aged 90 on 23 May 2015, made pioneering discoveries in the 1950s on the effects of head trauma on the brain. While carrying out histopathological studies with Peter Daniel in Oxford, she identified characteristic changes to brain cells following severe head injuries. She showed that shearing injuries, arising as a result of rapid acceleration or deceleration at the time of trauma, produced diffuse degeneration of the cerebral white matter 1 . The histopathological changes she described later became known as diffuse axonal injury (DAI) or Sabina Strich syndrome. She claimed that cellular changes of this type were the cause of later dementia. In 1957, shortly after the publication of this highly original work, she followed Peter Daniel to the Institute of Psychiatry, London where she continued her work on the histopathology of the brain, being appointed senior lecturer and subsequently Reader in Neuropathology.

Ross Hamilton and Alastair Palin
However, in 1973, she decided to change specialties and retrain as a child psychiatrist and psychotherapist. In many ways a private person, she volunteered little on what led to that change. Even to close friends, she only revealed that she was more interested in the mind than the brain. One conjectures an epiphany associated with having undergone a Freudian and then a Jungian analysis, linked perhaps to her family's cultural heritage and lifelong interest in ideas.
Two years after becoming an honorary clinical assistant at the Belgrave Hospital for Children, she moved on to senior registrar posts, first at King's College Hospital and then at The Royal London Hospital. In 1977 she was appointed consultant psychiatrist to the Croydon Child Guidance Clinic. Here she particularly enjoyed working with families and joined The Association of Family Therapists. She was noted for her friendly but idiosyncratic clinical style, often forthright, but touched with a warm humour. In addition to the benefits deriving from her own psychoanalysis, she obtained experience of group work during the early years of the Institute of Group Analysis. Later, as a member, she was actively involved in training group analysts on courses as far apart as Manchester and Heidelberg. By the time of her retirement in 1984, she recalled with some pleasure that she had attained membership of the two Royal Colleges devoted to medicine and pathology, and fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Sabina Strich was born in Munich into an intellectual Jewish family of private means. An older sister died when 9 years old. Her younger sister moved and brought up a family in the United States, where Sabina was a frequent visitor. With the rise of the Nazi party the family fled Germany, settling in Cambridge, where she attended The Perse School. In 1943 she won a scholarship to study medicine at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, gaining a degree in physiology before embarking on clinical studies as one of the earliest clinical students of the Oxford Medical School at the Radcliffe Infirmary. She qualified BM BCh in 1949. Following house posts in medicine and surgery in Oxford and Swansea, in 1951 she was awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) scholarship for training in research methods, initially at Manchester and then in Professor Sir Hugh Cairns' surgical department at Oxford. Here she obtained a personal MRC grant to study the neuropathology of severe head injuries with Peter Daniel.
After her retirement she returned to Oxford, in many ways her spiritual home. She bought a riverside apartment and set about creating a new and active life. She loved companioned walking and travelling far afield. Not ready to give up psychotherapy, she approached the Isis Centre, an open access NHS counselling service whose small number of core staff was augmented by associate counsellors. Sabina generously volunteered in a number of roles -such as a consultant in weekly case discussion groups -and in a range of educational events. She ran a client group and an experiential group for nurses studying psychodynamic practice, saw couples and did some family work. She was especially valued as a supervisor in all these modalities as well as in individual work. She developed a small private practice and took active roles within the Oxford Psychotherapy Society, of which she was a founding member. She spoke on a number of occasions, as well as submitting articles and commentaries.
To all her professional activities she brought a distinctive 'Sabinoid style'. As a supervisor, her comments tended to be few and authoritative, but never critical, thus facilitating an ambience which encouraged others to develop their own ideas. After 11 years she left the Isis Centre, but remained linked with her many friends in the psychotherapy world.
Towards the end of this period, she developed a new interest. Having been led to believe as a child that she had no artistic abilities, she experimented with clay and was surprised and delighted to discover that distinctive, often quirky figures, with vitality and movement, emerged from her fingertips. Encouraged, she took lessons in sculpture and soon became an accomplished sculptress, exhibiting her work in local private exhibitions. Maybe it was in this creative work that her belief in the unconscious, her self-assurance and above all her empathic interest in people came to the fore.
Recognising mild cognitive impairment, in her 80th year she moved to a pleasant apartment in a retirement complex. Art exhibitions, theatre and music played an important part in her life; she regularly attended concerts and read widely. Always fond of poetry, she published a small book of her own verse, with poems which were short, powerful and laced with dry humour.
She found increasing deafness and lapses in memory deeply frustrating but -typically -Sabina responded by forming a group for the elderly with early dementia. She was active in maintaining her interests in medicine, religion, philosophy and psychoanalysis, attending a seminar in the last week of her life. Ever a realist, and having contentedly reached 90 years, she was reconciled to her own death and died after a short illness.
Dr Peter Agulnik