Spring 2025 Colloquium -Laura Hirshbein
University of Michigan
A Dorothy B. Bernstein Lecture in the History of Psychiatry
Title: "Lee Harvey Oswald and American Child Psychiatry, 1963-1983"
Abstract: After Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, it came to light that Oswald had seen a psychiatrist as a teenager and had been assessed to need treatment that he never received. The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children was created in 1965 to gather data to prevent another Oswald. The hundreds of experts in many disciplines who contributed to a study of the issues produced a sprawling and comprehensive report that centered primarily on major social factors affecting children, especially poverty and racism. A small committee on clinical issues was formed late in the JCMHC work and its recommendations regarding treatment of children with mental illness was barely considered in the final work product of the commission, which was published in 1970. Some child psychiatrists continued to advocate for big social interventions for kids through the subsequent decade. By the early 1980s, though, child psychiatrists decided that social factors were beyond the purview of the profession. In the aftermath of Oswald’s assassination of JFK, child social psychiatry had its moment – and ultimately fell flat.
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