Lindemann, Erich, 1900-1974

Erich Lindemann (1900-1974), PhD, 1922; MD, 1926, Universities of Marburg and Giessen, Germany, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, was Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital who specialized in social and disaster psychiatry and community mental health. He was the first to recognize and describe loss associated with acute grief and one of the first psychiatrists to build working relationships with sociologists, anthropologists, and social psychologists to introduce preventive mental health ideas into community life. Lindemann also worked with survivors and bereaved relatives of the over 500 victims of the Coconut Grove Fire in Boston, Mass. in 1942. Lindemann founded the Wellesley Human Relations Service, the first community mental health agency in the United States, in 1948.