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Matthew Lewin
Dr Julian Leff
- Credit: Matthew Lewin
Dr Julian Leff, the internationally acclaimed and award-winning psychiatrist who broke much new ground in the treatment of schizophrenia, died peacefully at his Hampstead home on February 23. He was 82.
Julian was born above his father’s surgery in Kentish Town into a family with strong socialist ideals.
His parents met while helping men on the 1936 hunger march of 2,000 men from Jarrow to a rally in Hyde Park. His father, Sam, went on to become one of the founders of the NHS, and his mother, Vera, a novelist, was one of the three instigators of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
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“I’m afraid you should prepare for the worst. There’s a strong chance Millie’s heart will fail at some point in the next two weeks,” a doctor told 16-year-old Millie Sansoye and her parents, who were perched on the end of her hospital bed. Millie’s heart didn’t fail, but she spent 10 traumatic days on bed rest in hospital. “My parents were shell-shocked but I didn’t care whether I lived or died because mentally, I was suffering so much,” Millie, now 27, tells me. “It was only watching my mum, who never cries, sitting on my bed sobbing for half an hour straight that spurred me to fight for my life.”