University of California Seal

IN MEMORIAM

James Q. Simmons III, M.D.

Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus

Los Angeles

1925—2005

 

 

The UCLA Department of Psychiatry recently lost one of the program’s founders and a true innovator in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. Jim Simmons served as the first Child Psychiatry Fellow and went on to lead and develop the program for the next 30 years. It is an honor to speak for Jim’s countless friends, colleagues, mentees, and former students from the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which he often referred to as “this lash-up”. We must also include a thank-you from the hundreds of patients and families that he helped over the years.

 

Jim was born in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey. College was interrupted by World War II, and he served with distinction in the 7th Armored Division in Europe. After the war, he finished his college degree at Rutgers University in 1948 and attended Medical School at Wake Forest where he graduated in 1952. He did his year of internship at Walter Reed Medical Center and later came to Los Angeles in 1955 to do his psychiatry residency at the Veterans Administration Hospital. He then became a staff psychiatrist in the children’s unit at Camarillo State Hospital. Camarillo’s children’s program served the most severely disturbed children – for example, those with autism, developmental disabilities, and schizophrenia. It was an experience that would guide his interests for the next thirty years. Fortunately for all of us, he then came to UCLA to do his fellowship in child psychiatry. He was literally the first graduate of a training program that, with Jim’s subsequent leadership, became the finest in the country. He joined the faculty at UCLA in 1962, 37 years of age, and never looked back.

 

His many accomplishments over the next 30-plus years must be put in perspective. Child psychiatry as we know it today was in its infancy. For example, treatment options were primarily limited to psychodynamically based psychotherapy which was helpful for some children but not for many. But Jim did not think like other people. He was convinced that new treatment strategies were not only needed, but were supported by the available evidence. After establishing himself at the Neuropsychiatric Institute, we can remember his looking over the state of things, and using one of his famous phrases “As sure as God made little green apples, this lash-up is as screwed up as Hogan’s goat”.

 

So what did he do? Among his many accomplishments, he designed from the ground up what are state of the art inpatient services for the Child and Adolescent Division, including separate programs for children and adolescents. He fostered a true multi-disciplinary approach to child psychiatry – recognizing that the complex problems of children required experts from many disciplines. He developed a team of professionals from psychiatry, psychology, pediatrics, neurology, special education, social work, speech pathology, nutrition and occupational and recreational therapy. Jim personally built that team and the new culture that was required. Jim was one of the first child psychiatrists to pioneer and research treatment based on behavioral principles and applied these to the inpatient care of children and adolescents. He was also one of the first child psychiatrists to make the assessment and treatment of children with developmental disabilities integral to child psychiatry training and clinical practice. With colleagues George Tarjan and Nat Buchwald he developed both a major interdisciplinary training program (now known as the Tarjan Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities) and a research center (The UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center). Over the years, Jim was Chief of Clinical Services for the Child and Adolescent Division and ultimately became Director of the Mental Retardation Child Psychiatry Program. In summary, Jim Simmons went from being the first child psychiatry trainee at UCLA to being the cornerstone and leader of what is arguably the finest Child Psychiatry Program in the country. Jim did not think like the rest of us, he was dramatically ahead of his time, and his legacy is the remarkable program he developed and led for so many years.

 

Remarkably, at the same time he was leading the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Division, he engaged in a distinguished military career in the National Guard. From 1958 to 1976, he rose from the rank of Captain to Colonel as Commander of the 143rd Medical Evacuation Unit and subsequently of the 175th Medical Group. In 1977, he was promoted to Brigadier General as Commander of the California National Guard Medical Brigade. In 1981, he was promoted to Major General and posted to the Pentagon as Special Assistant to the Army Surgeon General and consultant on medical readiness to the Assistant Secretary of Defense. He received over 15 commendations during this remarkable period of service. He was the only person in the history of the California National Guard to twice receive the Order of California medal, the highest military honor in the State of California. It speaks to Jim’s extraordinary dedication and leadership skills that he was able to engage at the highest level in these two simultaneous careers.

 

Jim was a remarkable teacher and clinician. In the early days, before there were observation rooms with one-way mirrors, he would invite an emotionally disturbed child into a room with as many as 40 residents, colleagues and staff. In a minute or two there would only be two people, the child and Jim. After the interview was over, Jim would lead a discussion of the case, translating a complex history and observations into the simplest and most straightforward terms. It is an experience that legions of students will never forget. These students have gone on to leadership positions around the country and, to this day, attempt to model their own teaching after Jim’s.

 

Jim was also a wonderful administrator and leader of people. Jim led from the front lines, not from an upstairs office. Staff would be hard at work on the unit or in the clinic and suddenly Jim would appear – asking how things were going (“How is life in the putty factory?”). He would listen to the views of the front-line clinicians and staff, and would chat with the custodians. Perhaps he learned it in the military, but Jim knew how to care for his troops. Jim served as a trusted advisor to a generation of child mental health clinicians. He was straightforward and without artifice. He had a remarkable integrity. He listened and told you how it was – even if it smelled like Hogan’s goat. What was unusual, in a competitive academic environment, is that you never felt that things were being done behind your back. Cynicism and intrigue were simply not in his vocabulary – he could spot it but he didn’t use it.

 

Finally, Jim was clinically active throughout his career, even when burdened with a huge administrative load. He saw his own patients and supervised everywhere, especially as a consultant to the Department of Pediatrics. He literally went the extra mile. For many years, once a month he would also drive to Mohave and Ridgecrest for a weekend to serve children where other services were simply not available. We still get calls from clinicians in the area, ten years after his retirement. Can you send someone like Jim Simmons? The answer is: there is no one like Jim Simmons.

 

Andrew Russell

Steven Forness