Clare, Anthony W. 1942-2007 (Anthony Ward Clare)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born December 24, 1942, in Dublin, Ireland; died October 28, 2007. Physician, psychiatrist, broadcaster, journalist, and author. In 1976 Clare published the book Psychiatry in Dissent: Controversial Issues in Thought and Practice, which, in part, presented his argument that physician-psychiatrists are more appropriate choices for treating people with true mental illnesses than psychologist-psychotherapists, who do not have medical training. The book aroused public interest and led him to guest slots on radio talk shows and eventually to his own very successful series, In the Psychiatrist's Chair. From that chair Clare interviewed British celebrities for nearly twenty years and succeeded in popularizing psychiatric therapy as few others could have. Critics reported that he was a gifted interviewer, though rarely an aggressive one, who kept his listeners glued to their radios week after week. Some of his more compelling radio episodes were eventually collected in the book In the Psychiatrist's Chair in 1984. Clare also hosted the radio series All in the Mind, beginning in 1988, and attempted some television spinoffs that were comparatively short-lived. He ended his media career, based in England, in 2002, to devote more time to his family in Ireland and his professional commitments in that country. Clare's popular writings and media persona sometimes overshadowed his more traditional role as a psychiatrist and medical journalist. During the early years of his radio career he worked concurrently as a professor and department chair at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College in London. In 1989 he was appointed director of medicine at Saint Patrick's Hospital in Dublin, where he worked for the rest of his life, commuting to London for the radio program until 2002. Clare wrote several books for his professional peers. His books for a popular audience include (with radio producer Sally Thompson) Let's Talk about Me: A Critical Examination of the NewPsychotherapies (1981), (with comedian Spike Milligan) Depression: How to Survive It (1993), and On Men: Masculinity in Crisis (2000).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), October 31, 2007, p. 61.