Obituary: Professor Malcolm Lader
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OBITUARY
Obituary: Professor Malcolm Lader Ian Stolerman 1 & Alyson Bond 1 & Martin Jarvis 2 & H. Valerie Curran 3
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
In the early days of clinical psychopharmacology, Malcolm Lader did much to lay the foundations of the subject in Britain. Primarily a psychiatrist, he had diverse interests that ranged through physiology, psychology, pharmacology and law in
* H. Valerie Curran [email protected] Ian Stolerman [email protected] Alyson Bond [email protected] Martin Jarvis [email protected] 1
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, London, UK
2
University College, London, UK
3
Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, University College London, Gower Street, London, UK
addition to medicine. His love of learning was life-long. Indeed he obtained an honours degree in Law in 2006 precisely 50 years after his first degree in medicine. His early studies with Alyson Bond led to the quantification of subjectively experienced drug effects and their objective physiological correlates. The clinical studies for which Malcolm is best known were on benzodiazepine dependence, initially carried out with Hannes Petursson. Despite early preclinical evidence of their potential for inducing dependence, marketing techniques emphasised their clinical advantages over the earlier barbiturates while downplaying, and sometimes denying, the risk of addiction. Malcolm started an outpatient clinic at the Maudsley Hospital for anxious patients, the majority of whom had been taking benzodiazepines for years. He and Hannes systematically studied these patients and provided strong evidence for the occurrence of BDZ dependence when used in the long term at normal therapeutic doses. Malcolm did not simply publish these findings but wrote many articles for broader audiences and engaged with the media to raise the public’s awareness of BDZ dependence. This led to him becoming a persona non grata in some quarters. His work had a major impact upon the extent of BDZ prescriptions across the globe. Malcolm went on to identify alternatives to BDZs in treating anxiety and conducted early randomised controlled trials with buspirone, antihistamines and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. He also acknowledged the importance of psychological treatments. Malcolm made major contributions to the development of psychopharmacology by his enthusiastic support of societies. He was President of the Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA) for 10 years and encouraged the growth of its publication, the British Journal of Addiction, which evolved into Addiction, the premier international journal in the field. The British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) came into existence in the 1970s, and he helped shape its growth, playing a major role in the controversy that its initially limited scope engendered. He was BAP President from 1986 to 1988. In his home town of Liverpool, Malcolm was a star medical student, gaining many prizes. The day he qualified, he moved
Psychopharmac
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