Melvin Sabshin, M.D., APA medical director from 1974 to 1997, died Saturday, June 4 in London, England, where he had been living since his retirement. During his tenure as medical director, Sabshin led the APA and American psychiatry through enormous changes. Among his most important achievements, detailed in his 2008 book
Changing American Psychiatry (published by APPI), was to help move psychiatric diagnosis and treatment toward a more empirical, evidence-based nosology. Sabshin was also a pivotal figure in the confrontation with the Soviet Union over abuse of psychiatry during the Cold War.
Psychiatric News published a three-part series about that historic confrontation. For more information see
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/45/21/6.1.full,
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/45/22/11.1.full, and
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/45/23/9.1.full.
