k Obituary

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 6

k Obituary

Prof. R. W. Medlicott

PA Dunedin Professor Reginald Warren Medlicott, a psychiatrist and former medical director of Dunedin’s Ashburn Hall, has died in New Plymouth, the “Otago Daily Times” reported. He was 73. Professor Medlicott, founding president of the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, served as medical director at Ashburn Hall, New Zealand’s only private psychiatric hospital, for 31 years. During that time he presided over major changes in the care and treatment of psychi-

atrically ill patients. He was born in Waimate and educated at Waitaki Boys’ High School. He studied medicine at the University of Otago, graduating in 1937 and serving as an intern at Palmerston North Hospital. Professor Medlicott had an international reputation, which began when he took up a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1949 at Western. Reserve University Medical School and university hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. He became a fellow of both the Royal Australasian College of Physicians

and the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, which he helped found and of which he was the first president. On retiring from Ashburn Hall in 1978, Professor Medlicott and Mrs Medlicott moved to Raumati Beach, where he continued with a substantial workload until the middle of this year. He worked in his private practice as a consultant at both Lake Alice and Porirua hospitals, and did assignments for the Justice Department. Professor Medlicott is survived by his wife, a son, and a daughter.