The Guardian
guardian.co.uk: Friday 3 May 2002.
Professor Israel Kolvin, who has died aged 72, made an important research contribution to our understanding of the health of emotionally troubled children, and to the practice of child psychiatry. He was one of a small number of child psychiatrists, who, over the last 40 years, established an academic base for the subject.
Born to immigrant Polish-Jewish parents in Johannesburg, Kolvin suffered the loss of his father at the age of six. The family experienced financial hardship. He worked his way through medical school at the University of the Witwatersrand, having first gained a degree in psychology and philosophy.
His choice of a career was influenced by the deprivation and malnutrition he saw in children at the Baragwanath hospital, Soweto, where he worked as a junior doctor, as well as by the severe psychiatric conditions he met in the emergency room.
Kolvin came to Britain in 1958 to train, first in Edinburgh, and then in Oxford. With the encouragement of Kit Ounsted, a well-known child psychiatry researcher, he embarked on his first important study, demonstrating that childhood autism and schizophrenia were distinct entities - something not previously understood - and helped to clarify that autism is a developmental disorder.
Having decided with Rona, his wife since 1954, not to return to South Africa during the apartheid era, in 1964 Kolvin became physician in charge of the Nuffield psychology and psychiatry unit in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1977, he was appointed to a personal chair in child psychiatry at Newcastle University, where he established a vibrant academic and clinical centre, which attracted many talented researchers.
One of the major studies to come out of Kolvin's time at Newcastle was a scientifically rigorous project to evaluate the effectiveness of psycho-therapeutic interventions in schools, with emotionally disturbed young people. Published as Help Starts Here (1981), the study showed that it was possible to make a difference to schoolchildren's wellbeing by the use of various forms of psychotherapy.
This work continues to have great significance in the modern NHS, where the emphasis is on evidence-based practice. In addition, providing psychological services in schools is often more acceptable to young people than attendance at a child mental-health service, partly because it is less stigmatising.
Kolvin and his colleagues investigated the cycle of deprivation over three generations, using a cohort known as the Newcastle 1,000 family study, which had begun in 1947. They followed up 300 of the original subjects, who had been identified as deprived, many of whom by then had children of their own. They were able to identify many factors that made the children vulnerable to on-going disadvantage, but also to recognise protective factors that made some more resilient. These included an easy temperament, social skills, academic ability and competent parenting.
In 1987, Kolvin was appointed to chair the Cleveland Inquiry second-opinion panel, set up to re-assess a large number of cases where intra-familial child sexual abuse had been alleged. His evidence to the inquiry, chaired by Lady (now Dame) Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, consisting of the panel's report, together with a review of the field of child sexual abuse, was regarded as a significantly important contribution. The inquiry had far-reaching effects on child protection practices, and influenced the development of the 1989 Children Act.
In 1990, Kolvin was appointed to the newly-established Bowlby chair in child and family mental health, at the Tavistock clinic and Royal Free hospital medical school, London; from 1994, he was emeritus professor of child psychiatry.
His wide-ranging expertise, combined with personal charm and tact, enabled him to integrate robust research methodologies and understanding with the psychotherapeutic endeavours of the Tavistock, with its international reputation for training and clinical excellence.
Important studies followed, including research into the effectiveness of individual and group psychotherapy for sexually abused girls; a European multi-centre study into the treatment of depression in children by individual psychotherapy and systemic family therapy; a cross-cultural study of mother-infant patterns of behaviour with participation from Japan, Hong Kong and Europe; and research into psychopathology and resilience in children with haemophilia and thalassaemia-B.
Kolvin was also committed to the work of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, where he held many offices, including that of chair of the child and adolescent faculty, vice-president and honorary treasurer. In these roles, he contributed to the development of modern psychiatric training and practice. He supported the college's opposition to the misuse of psychiatry for political purposes, and was made an honorary fellow in 2000.
A humane and compassionate man, Kolvin was unstinting in the support he gave to those who worked and trained with him. Supported by Rona, and his son and daughter, he faced his terminal illness with courage and the determination to survive for as long as possible, in order to complete his task.
Israel 'Issy' Kolvin, psychiatrist, born May 5 1929; died March 12 2002