Lionel Hersov obituary

My colleague Lionel Hersov, who has died aged 95, was one of the founding fathers of modern child psychiatry. He was a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley hospital from 1968 until moving to the US in 1984 to become professor of psychiatry and paediatrics at the University of Massachusetts.

His research in the 1960s on children who stay away from school was the first to show systematically the difference between truancy, which is delinquent, and school refusal, which is due to the child’s severe anxiety, in some cases due to the child’s fear that harm will befall their mother if they are not at home. Only when this was understood could plans for a return to school – with collaboration from parents and teachers – be attempted.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2vCpoVA