John Richard Robinson: pioneered the concept of therapeutic psychiatric communities

John Robinson always wanted to be a psychiatrist. Over his almost 30 years at the Littlemore Hospital in Oxford, through the creation and promotion of therapeutic psychiatric communities, he made a national and international contribution to the care of patients with acute psychiatric illness and of older patients with mental health problems and dementia. In his memoir O, To Be a Doctor (Frontier Publishing, 2012) he describes, with characteristic modesty, his rich medical and personal life, and identifies numerous experiences that sensitised him to the need for a more patient centred, enlightened, and collaborative approach to psychiatry.

As a medical student on a paediatric attachment, he experienced Dermot McCarthy’s innovative practice of having a parent to stay with the patient in hospital—“what a wonderful insight into the creative power of emotional attachment.” He describes a ward …