Max Glatt

Pioneer in the treatment of alcohol and drug addicts

Max Glatt

Pioneer in the treatment of alcohol and drug addicts

Max Glatt, who has died aged 90, was one of the pioneers in the treatment and rehabilitation of alcoholics and drug addicts. Perhaps more than anyone else, he was responsible for a change in attitude - from one that regarded alcoholics as nuisances to one that saw them as patients requiring treatment.

Born in Berlin into a prosperous middle-class family (his father was an insurance broker), Max was destined for a prestigious academic career in medicine but the racial laws of the time made it practically impossible for Jews to gain a university appointment. Even so, in 1936, Max was awarded a doctorate in neurological medicine at Leipzig University. He should have left Germany then but he delayed his departure. When, after Kristallnacht in 1938, he tried to escape to Holland, he was captured by frontier guards and taken to Dachau. He later learned that, at the same time, his parents were taken to a concentration camp in Estonia where they were eventually killed. His sister, who had been smuggled across the border into Holland, was the only other member of his family to survive.

Max, the eternal optimist, the man who saw no evil in his fellow human beings, was forced to review his beliefs and his attitudes. But this did not lead to bitterness. He returned to Germany to lecture and to receive honours from various universities. He remained interested in his native country, particularly in the experiences of those who, like the Bielenbergs, had remained in Germany while in opposition to the Nazi regime.

Max arrived in England in 1940. He was soon classified as an enemy alien and was sent to Australia. By 1942, he was back in this country and his medical career, which was to stretch over 60 years, took off.

His work began - as it was to continue - in psychiatric hospitals. From early on he had decided to dedicate himself to the treatment of alcohol and drug addicts. He identified with them, seeing them as people who had been stigmatised and made to feel unwelcome.

In 1952, he set up the first NHS unit for the treatment of alcoholism at Warlingham Park Hospital in Croydon. In 1962 he set up a unit for the treatment of both alcoholism and drug addiction at St Bernards Hospital, in Ealing, west London, a unit that is now called the Max Glatt Centre. Both units as well as further centres, private and NHS, in which he was involved were run on group lines on therapeutic community principles. He set up the first treatment unit in a prison - Wormwood Scrubs - which now also bears his name and where he continued to run groups until just before his death. There, his interest in football helped him to forge a close relationship with the inmates who named their football team "the Glatt Dynamos".

Max was on the honorary staff of four London teaching hospitals and taught their students. He chaired or sat on countless committees and was an adviser on alcohol and drug addiction to the WHO. He advised the BMA, the Home Office, the royal colleges and many other interested bodies. He was the cofounder of the Medical Council on Alcoholism and of the National Council on Alcoholism. He edited journals on alcohol and drug addiction and wrote a full and comprehensive textbook, entitled Alcoholism, which was first published in the 1960s. He often gave it to his patients.

He received many honorary degrees in this country and abroad and was held in high esteem by his colleagues.

Max was universally liked and admired. He understood both alcohol and drug addicts, was never censorious and seldom gave up hope. This enabled patients to open up to him both in group and individual sessions. He used to say that he was addicted to addicts.

He was a quiet, modest and gentle person with a sharp sense of humour and an infectious smile. He was deeply religious, devoted to his wife and family and of course to his work. He ran his weekly group at the Florence Nightingale Hospital until he suffered a fall from which he never recovered.

Max Meier Glatt, doctor, born January 26 1912; died May 14 2002