David Stafford

We at the Arbours Crisis Centre are sad to announce the death of our colleague David Stafford . David is remembered by all of us for his kindness, helpfulness and clinical ability in working with people in severe states of emotional distress. He is also remembered for the generous and lively support he offered to his colleagues. David began his career in mental health work with the Richmond Fellowship and came to the Arbours Crisis Centre as a resident therapist in 1979. This is an unusual and demanding job requiring personal stamina and solidity as well as technical expertise. The resident therapist lives at the Centre and is available to the residents to offer help and support at a time of breakdown and crisis. Residents at the Centre could readily recognize David's ability to contain immense distress and challenging behaviour, without becoming overwhelmed, ‘bogged-down’ or retaliatory. Whilst at the Centre, David met Suzanne, a social work student on placement, who was to become his wife.

Subsequently, David qualified as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with the Association of Arbours Psychotherapists and also graduated in psychology from Brunel University. For the next few years David developed his expertise as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and began his work with the families and children of alcoholic parents. He became Director of the St Joseph's Centre for the treatment of addiction (part of Holy Cross Hospital, Haslemere) and set up the Co-Dependency Clinic there. Concurrently, David was a founding member of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, and became its chairman in 1996. This was the position he continued to hold until his death. David's book Children of Alcoholics was based on his insights from this work and was reprinted in 1996. David's first book, An Agreed Understanding , discussed parent and professional communication in the light of the 1981 Education Act, and Co-Dependency , written with Liz Hodgkinson, concentrates on the tr