Solomon, Maida H. (Maida Herman), 1891-1988

Maida Herman Solomon, pioneer psychiatric social worker and professor of psychiatric social work at Simmons College School of Social Work, was born in Boston, March 9, 1891, the daughter of Joseph Michael and Hennie (Adler) Herman. She was educated at public schools: the Prince School and the Boston Grils' Latin School, and then earned an A.B. from Smith College (1912) and an S.B. from Simmons College (1914.) She took one course at Portia School of Law in 1914. In 1916 she married Harry Caesar Solomon, a psychiatrist who was later Medical Director of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and in the 1960s commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.

Solomon began her career as research assistant at Civic Service House, a Boston settlement house, in 1914. She then joined the Boston Psychopathic Hospital (later Massachusetts Mental Health Center), where she worked as a fieldworker with families of neuro-syphilitic patients, 1916-1919, under Mary Jarrett, head social worker at BPH. From 1919 to 1934 while raising four children, she continued to work part-time as a consultant for the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and Massachusetts Psychiatric Institute. In 1934 Solomon joined the Simmons College School of Social Work as instructor, later professor, and was head of the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, 1942-1957. At Simmons she developed a graduate program integrating academic study with fieldwork practice.

In 1957, saying that she had "retired from Simmons College, but not from social work," Solomon continued to work as a consultant for the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and supervised a number of projects that made use of volunteers in the treatment of the mentally ill: at Metropolitan State Hospital, the Well-Met Project, Inc., of Harvard's Phillips Brooks House, and VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) programs at a number of Boston mental health institutions.

Solomon was active in many civic and professional organizations: she was a member of the Board (from 1926) and vice-president (1955) of Hecht House, a Jewish settlement house for girls founded by the Hebrew Ladies' Sewing Society which merged with the Young Men's Hebrew Association in 1959 and closed in 1970. She was a member of the Union Park Forum, a Jewish speakers' forum and of the Monday Lunch Club, an informal gathering of social workers. She was a charter member of the American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers (AAPSW), was its first president, 1926-1928, and served on its education subcommittee, conducting a national survey of PSW curricula, and chairing its Advisory Committee to the American Red Cross, 1940-1945. She was also active in the AAPSW's successor organization, the National Association of Social Workers. She was the first chair of the Social Service Committee of Beth Israel Hospital, 1928-1938, vice-president of the Massachusetts Society for Social Health, member of the board of the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health, chair of the Budget Committee of the Boston Community Fund, member of the Citizens' Committee of the Boston Community Survey, and on the board of Rutland Corner House, a half-way house.

She was the author of numerous articles, contributor to Harry C. Solomon's Syphilis of the Innocent (1920), and co-author of Field of Social Work (1915), Prevention of Hospitalization (1963), Drug and Social Therapy in Chronic Schizophrenia (1965) and Adolescents in a Mental Hospital (1968). For a more complete biography, see Solomon's curriculum vitae in #3.

Solomon died on January 24, 1988, at the age of ninety-six.

From the guide to the Papers, 1901-1988, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)