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Professor Julian Leff is the David Attenborough of schizophrenia studies. He is universally seen as one of the greatest social psychiatrists whose scientific research has been replicated worldwide, leading to a higher quality of life for people with schizophrenia and their families. Indeed, he received the Pelicier Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Association of Social Psychiatry of the World
Psychiatric Association in 2017. In addition to his pre-retirement work, he has continued ground-breaking discoveries into his ninth decade. How can this work be addressed in a single film?
The director and editor of this remarkable film is Adriel Leff, an award-winning film-maker and Julian's youngest son. He provides a simple and profound historic education for the non-medical viewer, a memorable refresher for specialists and a biography of a loved father. As he informed me, ‘a compelling story must comprise of a cohesive beginning, middle and end, and possess a natural flow throughout’ (personal communication, ).
The film looks at drug research for schizophrenia, the 1966–74 international pilot to examine the impact of drugs, the differences in international diagnosis in 10 countries (finding that the USA and Russia were the only two using slipshod non-scientific diagnostic criteria) and international recovery rates in 1974–88. To universal shock, his research found that Northern India outcomes were better than for white Europeans. ‘We are not good at healing mental illness in the West’, Julian Leff said wryly, ‘we manage it’.
Julian Leff's involvement with the World Health Organization found twice as many people recovered in Northern India than Europe. Indian families did not blame the patient for their illness and the different culture meant that work could still be followed, unlike in the UK. In Friern Hospital in London, Julian Leff was aware of the importance of work projects for the patients to lessen isolation.
From 1976 to 1987, Leff was involved in expressed