News Article
Leon Eisenberg receives the Juan José López Ibor Award
23 Sep 2008
Leon & Carola
Professor Leon Eisenberg, MD, received the Juan José López Ibor Award from the World Psychiatric Association on September 23, 2008, in Prague, Czech Republic. This award honors individuals and institutions that contribute significantly both to improving the understanding of psychiatric diseases and to enhancing the dignity of patients and their families. It consists of a diploma, a token, and 40,000 Euros for the award recipient and for an institution that the award recipient freely chooses, with half going to the institution.
Juan José López Ibor is President of the Juan José López Ibor Foundation; Head and Director of the Institute of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hospital Clinico San Carlos, Complutense University of Madrid; and Past-President of the World Psychiatric Association. Dr. López Ibor participated on the jury selecting Dr. Eisenberg for this biannual award of the Juan José López Ibor Foundation.
Professor Leon Eisenberg, the Presley Professor of Social Medicine, Emeritus, at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School has been Professor of Child Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1961-1967) and Massachusetts General Hospital (1967 -1993). In 1980, he became Chair of the Department of Social Medicine and Health Policy, a position that he held until 1993. The Juan José López Ibor Award honors Professor Eisenberg for the major scientific contributions he has made in many fields, including those of child and social psychiatry, public health, psychopharmacology and social medicine. In the 1940s, Leon Eisenberg was one of the very first psychiatrists interested in child psychiatry, and especially autism, being a student of Leo Kanner. Psychoanalysis was then the mainstream in American academic psychiatry, which he strongly challenged, aghast at the way in which parents of children suffering from autism were stigmatized and accused of being the source of the illness of their children. He was also one of the very first child psychiatrists to be interested in the new field of psychopharmacology, introducing randomized clinical trials of medications used to treat children with ADHD.
One of the main fights of Leon Eisenberg was in the field of Human Rights. He fought to allow minority students, especially African Americans, to join Harvard Medical School, by creating an affirmative action program in 1968, which he sustained by becoming Chairman of the Admission Committee from 1969 to 1974. He is also an active member of the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, which his wife Dr. Carola Eisenberg co-founded and which is a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient.
The Award will consist of a diploma, a sculpture of José Luis Sánchez, specially designed for the award, and 40,000 Euros to be split between the award recipient and an institution chosen by him. The organization Dr. Eisenberg has chosen is Physicians for Human Rights.