In Memoriam: Rose Childs and the Joy of Our Joint Leadership

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

I am not so sure how well I follow my own advice, at least in terms of this colleague. To help make do, I am making an exception on eulogizing psychiatrists, at least with the corresponding advantage of knowing her so well.

Rose Childs and I were coleaders of Houston’s largest community mental health clinic in our early careers from 1977-1989. It was a marriage of many social dualities, and occasional dialectics: the county system and Baylor College of Medicine; a social worker administrator and a psychiatrist medical director; a Black person and a White person; a Christian and a Jew; a woman and a man. But so similar in our hearts and souls, turning out to be a work “match made in heaven.” Much later, in 2016 when I won the Administrative Psychiatrist Award, my lecture picked up on loving your staff in a caring way. We did.

Teamwork is so important in many psychiatric systems, particularly for the with the most serious mental illness. Our West End clinic was the first clinic to be highlighted in a new national publication, Community Mental Health Center Spotlight, if I recall the name accurately. Innovative services, including an activities program and increasing patient peer responsibilities, emerged.¹ A book on the benefits of multidisciplinary teamwork was solicited.² The first model educational program on cultural psychiatry was developed, with a key focus on our understanding the influence of our own cultural identities, including religion, spirituality, and sexuality.³ It only ended because the leaders from Baylor and Harris County were personally buying and selling our beautiful buildings, at a time when clinical resources were said to be limited financially.

The staff relationships continued on and off thereafter, after Rose left to become Deputy Director in the county system and I went to Milwaukee to start the country’s first academic managed care system.⁴ However, we intermittently brought together any staff that remained for a staff lunch to update our lives. As the numbers dwindled, we met more often, once a year if we were well enough.

We anticipated meeting again right about now, as Rusti and I came to visit Houston again. But Rose could not be contacted. We then assumed something bad had happened, and it did. She died on May 4, connected to me in another way at midnight, as that happened to be the day before my birthday. She was 82. I could not formally thank her again, knowing we were approaching our dying and deaths. I learned so much from Rose, ranging from Black culture to how to share power.

Such an equal pairing of leadership in a clinical psychiatry system seems like a relatively rare situation. So much can go wrong in the relationship. Much more common is one clear leader of some mental health discipline or now, in our business-controlling days, a business administrator that puts profits first over patient care and staff development.⁴ But in this professional leadership case, 2 heads were surely better than one.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Bateman H. Pathway to Treasures: Discovering the Hope Empowerment Can Bring Toward Recovery from Serious Mental Illness. Herb Bateman; 2022.

2. Moffic HS, Adams G, eds. A Clinician’s Manual on Mental Health Care: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Addison-Wesley Publishing; 1982.

3. Moffic HS, Kendrick EA, Reid K, Lomax JW. Cultural psychiatry education during psychiatric residency. Acad Psychiatry. 1988;12:90-101.

4. Moffic HS. The Ethical Way: Challenges & Solutions for Managed Behavioral Healthcare. Jossey-Bass; 1997.