Leon Eisenberg

Infobox Person
name = Leon Eisenberg, MD


image_size = | caption = Dr. Leon Eisenberg
birth_date = 1922
birth_place = USA
death_date =
death_place =
occupation = Child Psychiatrist, Medical Educator
spouse = Carola Eisenberg, MD
religion = Jewish (secular)
nationality = USA/American

Dr. [http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dsm/WorkFiles/html/people/faculty/LeonEisenberg.htm/ Leon Eisenberg] (1922-), child psychiatrist and medical educator, is credited with a number of "firsts" in medicine and psychiatry - in child psychiatry, autism, and the controversies around autism, RCTs, [http://www.SocialMedicine.org/ social medicine] , global health, affirmative action, and [http://server03.cpa-apc.org:8080/Publications/Archives/Bulletin/2003/december/editorialEn.asp/ evidence-based psychiatry] .

Medical Accomplishments

The reasons Leon Eisenberg is listed as a famous figure in world and American psychiatry are numerous. Leon Eisenberg identified rapid return to school as the key to treatment in the management of the separation anxiety underlying school phobia. He completed the first outcome study of autistic children in adolescence and recognized patterns of language use as the best predictor of prognosis. He was Principal Investigator (PI) on the first grant from the Psychopharmacology Branch of NIMH for RCTs in child psychopharmacology. From a concern for evidence-based care, well before the phrase was coined, he introduced randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in psychopharmacology and showed that “tranquilizing” drugs were inferior to placebo in the treatment of anxiety disorders, whereas stimulant drugs were effective in controlling hyperactivity. He completed the first RCTs of psychiatric consultation to social agencies and of the utility of brief psychotherapy in anxiety disorders. He published a forceful critique of Konrad Lorenz’s instinct theory. He established the usefulness of distinguishing “disease” from “illness”. He has highlighted the environmental context as a determinant of the phenotype emerging from a given genotype, and until recently and since the late 1990s, he has been involved with developing conferences and resources for medical educators in various specialties that would help them incorporate, into courses with their current and future students, the tidal wave of new information in genomics yet to puzzle future clinicians. For many decades he has criticized psychoanalysis from a number of platforms.

Leon Eisenberg is proudest of the Diversity Lifetime Achievement Award he received in 2001 for his role in inaugurating affirmative action at HMS in 1968 and sustaining it as Chairman of the Admissions Committee from 1969 to 1974. He regards that as his most important contribution to Harvard Medical School.

With his wife, Dr. Carola B. Eisenberg, former Dean of Students, first at MIT, then at Harvard Medical School, he is active with [http://www.PHRUSA.org/ Physicians for Human Rights] .

Themes of Recent Writing

1) Evidence-based medicine

2) Why and how did psychoanalysis came to be so dominant for so long (the triumph of psychopharmacology over psychotherapy and changes in the way care was financed) has been explored repeatedly, but outlined here in two papers for different Josiah Macy Conferences:
*“Modern Psychiatry: Challenges in Educating Health Professionals to Meet New Needs"
*“The Challenge of Neuroscience: Behavioral Science, Neurology, and Psychiatry”

3) Human rights of patients.

4) Criticizing the replacement of patient interests with the profit motive in healthcare.

5) The relationship between "Pharma" ("Big Pharma" or the pharmaceutical industry, through sponsorship and 'education') and medical education.

Earliest Papers

*Kanner, L. & Eisenberg, L. (1956), Early Infantile Autism 1943-1955, "American Journal of Orthopsychiatry" 26, pp.55-65.

Select Publications

*Eisenberg, L. "Mindlessness and brainlessness in psychiatry" The Eli Lilly Lecture, Winter Quarterly Meeting. Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, 21 January 1986. "British Journal of Psychiatry" 1986;148:497-508.
*Eisenberg, L. "Rudolf Virchow: the physician as politician" "Medicine and War" 1986;2(4):243-250.
*Eisenberg, L. “From circumstance to mechanism in pediatrics during the Hopkins century. Pediatrics. 1990; 85:42-49.
*Eisenberg, L. “Subject and object in the grammar of medicine" "Penn Medicine" 1992(Fall);6:18-28.
*Eisenberg L. "The Social Construction of the Human Brain", "American Journal of Psychiatry" 152: 1563-1575, 1995. Translated into Italian as: ‘’La Costruzione Sociale Del Cervello Umano’’ Sapere 62(5):46-58, 1996.
*Eisenberg L. "Nature, niche and nurture: the role of social experience in transforming genotype into phenotype." "Academic Psychiatry". 1998; 22:213-222. Reprinted in Epidemiologia E Psichiatria Sociale 1999; 8:190-7. Translated as: Naturaleza, Entorno Y Crianza. El Papel de la Experiencia Social en la Transformacion del Genotipo en Fenotipo. "Psychiatria Publica" 1999; 11:139-46 .
*Eisenberg L. "Would cloned human beings be like sheep?" "New England Journal of Medicine". 1999; 340: 471-475. Reprinted in Klotzko AJ (Ed) (2001) The Cloning Source Book. N.Y., Oxford University Press pp. 70-79.
*Eisenberg, L. “Does social medicine still matter in an era of molecular medicine?" "Journal of Urban Health" 1999; 76: 164-175.
*Eisenberg, L. “Whatever Happened to the Faculty on the Way to the Agora?" "Archives of Internal Medicine" 1999;125:251-6.
*Eisenberg, L. "Is Psychiatry More Mindful or Brainier than it was a Decade Ago?" "British Journal of Psychiatry". 2000;176.1-5.
*Eisenberg, L. "Good Technical Outcome, Poor Service Experience: A Verdict on Contemporary Medical Care?" "Journal of the American Medical Association" 2001;285:2639-2641; in reply. "Journal of the American Medical Association" 2001;286:1315.
*Eisenberg, L. “Social Psychiatry and the Human Genome: Contextualizing Heritability" "British Journal of Psychiatry" 2004;184:101-103.
*Eisenberg L. "Letter to the Editor: Which Image for Lorenz?" "American Journal of Psychiatry" 2004;161:1760.
*Eisenberg L. "When “ADHD” was “the Brain-Damaged Child”", "Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology" 2007;17(3):279-283.

Papers written from Consulting

Kleinman A, Eisenberg L, Desjarlais R (Eds) (1995), Consultant on Bangladesh for World mental health: Priorities and problems in low-income countries. New York: Oxford University Press.

Awards

*Sc. D. (Hon), University of Manchester in the UK (1973)
*Sc. D. (Hon), University of Massachusetts in the U.S (1991)
*Theobald Smith Award, Albany Medical College (1979)
*Aldrich Richmond Award, American Academy of Pediatrics (1980)
*Dale Richmond Awards, American Academy of Pediatrics (1989)
*Samuel T. Orton Award, Orton Society (1980)
*Special Presidential Commendation, American Psychiatric Association (1992)
*Agnes Purcell McGavin Award for Prevention, American Psychiatric Association (1994)
*Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Pennsylvania (1992)
*Camille Cosby Award, Judge Baker Children's Center (1994)
*Thomas W. Salmon Medal, New York Academy of Medicine (1995)
*Blanche F. Ittleson Memorial Award, American Orthopsychiatric Association (1996)
*Mumford Award, Columbia University School of Public Health (1996)
*Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Mental Health, Institute of Medicine (1996)
*Award for Distinguished Contribution to Public Policy, SRCD (Society for Research in Child Development) (2003)
*Distinguished Service Award, American Psychiatric Association
*Walsh McDermott Medal, Institute of Medicine and the National Academies
*Benjamin Rush Medal and Lecture, American Psychiatric Institute (2006)
*Epidemiology Award, Harvard School of Public Health (2007)
*Harold Amos Diversity Award, Harvard Medical School (2008)
*Juan José López Ibor Award, Juan José López Ibor Foundation, World Psychiatric Association (WPA), granted at the World Congress of Psychiatry in Prague, The Czech Republic (2008) -
*Honorary Fellow, Greek Society of Neurology and Psychiatry
*Honorary Fellow, Ecuadorian Academy of Neuroscience
*Honorary Fellow, Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK)

ee also

*List of famous figures in psychiatry
*American Academy of Arts and Sciences
*Institute of Medicine

External links

* [http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dsm/WorkFiles/html/people/faculty/LeonEisenberg.htm Leon Eisenberg, MD]
* [http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/commence99/scholall.html Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars]
* [http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2008/022208/profile.shtml Leon Eisenberg: Dedicated to Letting the Outsider In, HMS Focus, Harvard Medical School, 02-22-2008, by Misia Landau, Senior Science Writer]