John Hope Henderson

At the age of 33, John Hope Henderson became physician superintendent of Elgin Hospital, embarking on a five year programme of ambitious and innovative community and hospital service modernisation. A few years later he became head of the much larger Bangour Village Hospital in East Lothian and continued reforming and modernising services. He became one of the early exponents of social psychiatry, in which clinical skills were melded with the ability to understand and respond to the social circumstances of patients and families. His influence on mental health in Scotland expanded further in 1974, …