Dr John Hope Henderson

Formerly Medical Director, St Andrew's Hospital, Northampton

Just a few weeks before he died of stomach cancer, aged 80, John Henderson rang me up at home. He wanted to complain about the medical elitism of a journal that could rename itself The Psychiatrist and to know why I had not done anything about it. He chided us in that firm but gentle Borders burr, then told me about the progress of his illness as if it were just another minor irritation to be tackled.

Right on, John! Right on to the end. For this was a man who had his priorities in order; a man of such generosity of vision that any insularity, geographical or professional, would have been anathema. During his life he straddled every boundary in sight - between doctor and patient, hospital and community, practitioner and management, and all the disciplines involved in mental health. He worked on three continents and in all three sectors, public, private and voluntary. He fought alongside politicians in pursuit of better services and fearlessly took them to task when patients' rights were being abused. He was a man at home in many cultures but with his life firmly grounded in his family. And he never lost sight of the fact that, among all this seriousness, it should also be fun.

John was born on 2 November 1929 in Galashiels, but moved to Aberdeen in his early childhood. He went through school in Aberdeen and Edinburgh (Melville College) before qualifying at the University of Aberdeen Medical School in 1954. After national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Kenya, he returned to train in psychiatry under Professor Malcolm Miller at the Royal Cornhill Hospital in Aberdeen and to take up successive posts as physician superintendent, first at Bilbohall Hospital, Elgin, and then at the Bangour Village Hospital, near Edinburgh. Already, he showed himself a pioneer in new ways of working with staff, patients and their families, within primary care, community and new-built modern hospital facilities. He passed his MRCPsych in 1956 and was elected FRCPsych in 1976.

In 1974, John made the leap from service leadership to international advisor. For 2 years he was Principal Medical Officer in Mental Health at the Scottish Home and Health Department and was then appointed advisor to the World Health Organization's (WHO) South-East Asia Office, based in New Delhi, where he and his wife Toshie lived for 4 years. They returned to the WHO's European Office in Copenhagen for 5 years, before John became Medical Director of St Andrew's Hospital, Northampton, where he remained until his clinical retirement in 1993.

Throughout his travels, John worked tirelessly to bring community, professional and political leaders together to improve the lot of people with mental health problems, and took courageous stands against the worst excesses of institutional abuse in the countries of the old Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and on the notorious Greek island of Leros. His diplomatic skills, his persuasiveness from the public platform and the bravery he showed when all else failed are legendary among his fellow battlers. In between times, he and his wife welcomed with open arms all who managed to reach them in whatever corner of the world they were living.

Not surprisingly, John was never going to take easily to retirement and he was soon dedicating himself to a pan-European strategy for mental health, as President of the European Council of the World Federation of Mental Health and as a founder member and Policy Advisor to Mental Health Europe, the largest non-governmental organisation for mental health on the continent. I have vivid memories of the dramatic speech he delivered to the Ministerial Conference in 2005 and of his quieter attempts to lead the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Ariadne-like, in and out of the Minotaur's lair in Brussels. The fact that both were ultimately rebuffed did not deter him in the slightest. Not for nothing was his middle name Hope.

John retreated at the last to the shelter of his devoted family, to Toshie, his wife of 52 years, his four sons, two of whom had followed him into mental health, his ten grand-children and two step-grandchildren, and to the friends, colleagues and admirers he had gathered around him over the years. He was a rugby player and referee of distinction, a skilled mountaineer who had climbed with some of Scotland's best from his earliest days in the Lairig Mountaineering Club, a regular skier from his chalet in the Pyrenees, a gardener, a wine buff, and a cook of passionate if sometimes anarchic technique.

Above all, John was a wonderful companion - whether you were floating down some foreign river on a tide of wine and anecdotes or sharing a bottle of whisky and a mutual contempt for bureaucracy around his fireside in Haddington. He was what we would call in Wales a simply ‘lovely’ man - warm, generous, wise and loyal. I have no idea whether he was tall or not, but he always seemed so. When his spare frame came into view, everything seemed a little brighter and more possible. He died on 4 January 2010.

I promised to write to The Psychiatrist after your call, John. Instead, I find myself writing this obituary, and raising a glass or three in your memory. We shall miss you dearly.