Maintenance Treatment in Recurrent Depression: Current and Future Directions

When William Sargant died in 1988 at the age of 81, he had made his mark on British psychiatry. He had exerted considerable influence on US psychiatry as well. This was especially obvious during a time when physical treatments were hardly the fashion in US psychiatry. As The Times (1988) stated at the time of his death, he had made psychiatry more respectable by keeping it close to the medical model. He did a great deal to make depression intelligible to general practitioners and, therefore, to make it a legitimate, respectable illness.