Tsung-yi Lin, 89, Psychiatrist With Global Approach, Dies
By BENEDICT CAREY
He was a non-Western doctor who helped give a Eurocentric, introspective field of medicine a global presence that it sorely lacked. He all but built the mental health system from the ground up in his native Taiwan, later helping governments in developing nations to do the same.
And he pushed for research that would, for the first time, rigorously document the prevalence of mental disorders worldwide, demonstrating that people from far-flung lands had many emotional struggles in common, whatever their cultural or economic differences.
Dr. Tsung-yi Lin, a psychiatrist who rose to become the director of mental health at the World Health Organization, died on July 20 at 89, his daughter Dr. Elizabeth Lin said, adding that the family had not made the death public until last week.
For decades, Dr. Lin was one of the world’s most persuasive and effective advocates for psychiatry as a centerpiece of public health, on par with infectious diseases and chronic medical conditions.
“It all makes sense today, but in the 1960s and 1970s the whole idea of doing epidemiology in psychiatry was outré, out there; it just didn’t seem logical to people,” said Dr. Arthur Kleinman, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist at Harvard. Dr. Lin changed that.
“He saw that psychiatry could not develop on a global stage without a presence in public health, and he was one of the early leaders who really framed that presence,” Dr. Kleinman added.
Dr. Lin was not long out of medical training when, in 1953, he published a scientific survey of mental disorders in Taiwan, the first of its kind. Later, at the W.H.O., he began a far more extensive effort, the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia, an inventory of that mental disorder in developing as well as Western countries.
The study showed striking similarities in the symptoms and prevalence of schizophrenia among many countries, and revealed differences in quality of care. It set a standard for psychiatric epidemiology and led to decades of subsequent research into other disorders, like depression and anxiety, as well as interventions for treatment.
Dr. Lin continued to develop research methods throughout most of his career, at universities in Europe, the United States and finally Canada, at the University of British Columbia.
In Taiwan, where in the 1950s and 1960s he devised and helped establish a modern mental health care system, Dr. Lin was seen as more than a medical figure. His father, a prominent intellectual, was killed in the infamous 2-28 massacre, in which Nationalist Chinese troops fired on native Taiwanese protesters in 1947, setting off a wave of violence that left thousands of Taiwanese dead. In 1998, Dr. Lin edited a book, “An Introduction to the 2-28 Tragedy in Taiwan: For World Citizens,” which in part laid out a blueprint for reconciliation between the native population and the island’s mainland Chinese.
The president of Taiwan at the time of its publication, Lee Teng-hui, “basically implemented the plan that Tsung-yi proposed,” said Richard H. Solomon, president of the United States Institute of Peace. “It was a seminal contribution to a society that was deeply wounded and divided.”
Tsung-yi Lin was born on Sept. 19, 1920, in Tainan, Taiwan. Both his father, Mo-seng Lin, a professor, and his mother, Chai-Hwang Wang, received higher education in Japan, as did their son. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University School of Medicine, now the University of Tokyo, in 1943, and his postgraduate training included stints in the 1950s at Harvard Medical School and later at the Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry in London.
He was director of mental health at the W.H.O. from 1964 to 1969, then moved to the University of Michigan, where he stayed through 1973 before joining the faculty at the University of British Columbia, retiring from his full-time position in 1985. He served as president of the World Federation for Mental Health from 1974 to 1979.
Dr. Lin was the author, co-author or editor of a number of influential books, including “Mental Health Planning for One Billion People: A Chinese Perspective,” with Leon Eisenberg, and “Normal and Abnormal Behavior in Chinese Culture,” with Dr. Kleinman. He founded the psychiatry department at National Taiwan University in Taipei and trained many of its leading graduates.
Dr. Lin is survived by his wife, Mei-chen Lin; five children, Dr. Siong-chi Lin, Lillian Lin Miao, Dr. Elizabeth Lin, Joy Lin Salzberg and Dr. David Lin; 11 grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
The killing of his father was a defining event in Dr. Lin’s life, those who knew him said. But it was not politics or conflict that animated his later work.
“He was not insensitive” to looking at cultural differences in psychiatry, Dr. Kleinman said. “But he was asking a bigger question: What is similar in mental illness around the world? What is it that we all have in common?”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 8, 2010
An obituary on Tuesday about the psychiatrist Tsung-yi Lin, a former director of mental health at the World Health Organization, referred incorrectly to Dr. Lin’s age at the time his father was killed in 1947. He was 26; he was not a teenager. The obituary also misstated the given name of the president of the United States Institute of Peace, who commented on the effect of Dr. Lin’s work in Taiwan. He is Richard H. Solomon, not Robert.
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