The Royal College of Psychiatrists Winter Business Meeting

24 January 2006, 4.30 p.m., to be held at the Royal College of Psychiatrists following the meeting of Council. Chaired by the President, Professor Sheila Hollins.

Agenda

1. 1. To approve the Minutes of the previous Winter Business Meeting held at the Royal College of Psychiatrists on 24 January 2005.

2. 2. Obituary.

3. 3. Election of Honorary Fellows.

Professor Abdol-Hamid Ghodse, CBE, FRCPsych

Hamid Ghodse has a firmly established national and international reputation that places him in the top echelon of present-day British psychiatrists. His contribution to the College has been huge and often quietly very influential. He was one of the first working Vice-Presidents and was Chairman of the Substance Misuse Section and a strong advocate for its faculty status.

He not only established the Board of International Affairs, but has developed it in a way not initially envisaged. He has thus brought to bear on all aspects of College life his high calibre as a prolific academic colleague (over 300 publications), his expertise as a clinician and his stature as Chairman of the prominent Department of Addiction Behaviour and Psychological Medicine at St George's Hospital.

Hamid is modest about his enormous contributions to our field. His award of the CBE in recognition of his international work underlines his prominence and contribution to public life.

His election to an Honorary Fellowship is timely because of his ongoing work as president of the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, and also because of the increasing profile of the Royal College of Psychiatrists within world psychiatry. His election would provide encouragement not only to those in his specialty but to the increasing number of psychiatrists around the world who have an allegiance to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It would also honour a man who has worked productively and extremely hard for the well-being not only of those with addiction problems but also for the institutional strength and international outreach of the College.

Professor Thomas Grisso, PhD

Professor Thomas Grisso is currently the Professor of Psychiatry and Coordinator of the Law. Besides being a teacher who spends much of his time educating and training a new generation of forensic psychiatry and psychology trainees, Professor Grisso has coordinated a number of ground-breaking research studies, many of which have changed the way the juvenile justice system has evolved worldwide. Although Professor Grisso was not the person to invent the concept of adjudicative competence, through his research and writing he certainly made it widely accepted worldwide that the legal concept must be applied differently to adolescents than to adults because of their less-developed capacities for viewing and understanding the criminal justice system. This had far-reaching consequences and has generated more research and enhanced our understanding of how to manage legal issues for adolescents with antisocial behaviour. Although most famous for his advocation of the juvenile's due process rights, he has made enormous and lasting contributions to the field of capacity in general. Through his collaboration and leadership in MacArthur Foundation projects, we now have standardised instruments such as the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Treatment (MacCAT–T) for assessing capacity to consent to treatment. In addition to the core work of the MacArthur Foundation, he has helped to develop and disseminate a screening instrument (The Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument; MAYSI) that is now used across North America and by some youth offending teams in this country. The author of over 100 articles in scientific publications and sole or joint author/editor of over 10 volumes, his work was acknowledged in 2005 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) who awarded him the Isaac Ray Award, the Association's highest honour for contributions to psychiatry and jurisprudence. He was also acknowledged twice in past years by the Association's prestigious Manfred Guttmacher Award (annual award for book with most significant contribution to psychiatry and law).

Professor Grisso has been honoured by medical societies and universities from all across America. An Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree has been bestowed on him by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Perhaps his most lasting contribution to the cause of adolescents came in 2005, when the US Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision declared that the juvenile death penalty was unconstitutional because it violates the US Constitution's 8th Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment, having reviewed its own opinion from 16 years earlier. The Highest Court was persuaded that greater scientific understanding and changing societal standards of decency made it imperative that the state could no longer pass death sentence on those who committed their crime as juveniles. The Court was persuaded by the scientific evidence, including an amicus curiae brief from the APA, which Professor Grisso helped to write.

Professor Thomas Grisso, one of the foremost researchers in his field, has made a unique contribution to the development of both mental health practice and law. In the field of psychiatric ethics he has increased our understanding of how mental illness and disability affects the capacity to consent to treatment, with consequent effects on how and whether patients are detained for treatment, and how they relate to their doctors. In the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, he has developed new measures and published two recent books on screening and assessing mental health problems in young people involved with the juvenile justice system. His work in both these fields has meant that the rights of some of the most vulnerable in our society have been better protected, and their clinical needs understood.

Few researchers have his clinical acumen or humanity; few clinicians have his intellectual rigour or gravitas. The body of our College would be enhanced by having Professor Thomas Grisso as an Honorary Fellow.

Rabbi Dame Julia Neuberger

Born on 27 February 1950, Rabbi Dame Julia Neuberger was educated at South Hampstead High School for Girls, Newnham College Cambridge and Leo Baeck College London. She had the distinction of becoming the first woman rabbi to have her own synagogue when she moved to the South London Liberal Synagogue in 1977. In that role, she has spoken, written and broadcast about her Liberal Jewish faith, and its relevance in today's world. In that role she also took on the pastoral care of others, and became concerned with the care of the dying.

More recently, she has moved into the arena of healthcare, becoming Chair of a National Health Service Trust in 1993 and then in 1997, Chief Executive of the King's Fund – an independent charitable foundation which aims to improve health, especially in London. She served on the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, and is a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. She is currently writing a new book, entitled The Moral State We’re In, about contemporary ethics in Britain. Altogether, a life bound up with ethical values and judgements.

Rabbi Dame Julia Neuberger has previously been Chair of Camden and Islington CHS NHS Trust (1993–97), Visiting Fellow (Harkness Fellowship) Harvard Medical School (1991–92), Visiting Fellow King's Fund Institute (1989–91) and Rabbi, South London Liberal Synagogue (1977–89). She has been a Civil Service Commissioner, Member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Chair of the Patients’Association, and holds Trusteeships of the British Council, Imperial War Museum and formerly Runnymede Trust among others. She is also a Vice-President of the United Nations Association, has a number of honorary doctorates and is Patron of the North London Hospice, of the Prisoners of Conscience Appeal Fund and the Memorial Arts Charity. Rabbi Dame Julia Neuberger is married with two children and lives in London.

Dr Mike Shooter, CBE, FRCPsych

Dr Mike Shooter came late to medicine, via a history/law degree, journalism, teaching and a host of other jobs.

For the last 20 years, he has practised as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, working with deprived families in the old mining valleys of South Wales.

He is the immediate past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, having previously been its Registrar and Director of Public Education.

Mr Etsuro Totsuka

Mr Totsuka is a freelance Japanese lawyer who has devoted his life to righting wrongs that he believes have been perpetrated by the Japanese government, and introducing concepts of basic human rights into Japan. He has worked largely without external funding, relying on personal and family finance.

There have been three main phases to his work. Between 1973 and 1982 he represented some 900 people who had serious side-effects from clioquinol. He pursued their claims against drug companies and the State of Japan. He won the case and immediately came to prominence as a victims’ lawyer.

In 1982 he came to London. He had been made aware of some brutal atrocities, including a number of homicides, in Japanese mental hospitals, and realised that such patients had no protection under Japanese law. He studied British and other mental health legislation and, using both individual case material and United Nations resolutions, he led a campaign, which resulted in the Japanese parliament passing the 1997 Mental Health Act. This has brought relief and protection to thousands of Japanese psychiatric patients.

In recent years he has been pursuing the Japanese government through the courts on behalf of hundreds of so-called Korean comfort women who were raped and abused by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War.

Currently, Mr Totsuka is the main Geneva Representative of the Japan Fellowship of Reconciliation, which is developing pioneering overseas educational programmes at the United Nations (Geneva) for students of Ryukoku University. He is also the General Secretary of the Research Institute of International Human Rights Law Policies (RIIHRLP).

We can think of no one else who has single-handedly done so much for human rights and it is of particular relevance to this College that he has championed the rights of mentally ill patients against his own government, and won.

He is an excessively modest man, and his claim for international recognition has been somewhat overlooked. By the award of the Honorary Fellowship, the College can begin to make amends within the field of mental health.