Irving Aaron Jacobs (1929-2013) Irving Aaron Jacobs was a pioneer in the field of community mental health and patients' rights who also made significant contributions to hospital administration. He belonged to a cohort of American psychologists whose education and careers were greatly influenced by world events and the rise of social consciousness in the United States during the 20th century. Irving Jacobs was bom on May 10, 1929, in Boston, where he grew up in a poor, predominantly Jewish section of the city. His time at Roxbury High was often turbulent, and he frequently had to make use of his fighting and running skills. A young congressman, John F. Kennedy, gave a rousing speech at his high school graduation that inspired Irving for the rest of his life. The message concerned the obligation to help others and pursue social justice. Irving joined the armed forces at the end of World War n just out of high school. His corpsman training in the U.S. Marines was a source of medical knowledge that he maintained throughout his career. After his discharge, he accompanied a friend to Houston University and found himself awed by one of the psychology professors there. He enrolled at the university with a major in psychology and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1952. Irving continued his education with graduate studies at Indiana University (IU), where he explored the effect of learning on the brains of monkeys. As a center for the arts, IU also provided him with the opportunity to meet and befriend painters and musicians and to develop a lifelong thirst for the arts. During this period, he joined other students in "sit-ins" to desegregate a bar near the campus. He was proud of his paiticipation and continued to work for civil rights for the rest of his life. After receiving a master's degree from IU in 1956, Irving moved to Denver to continue his doctoral studies. Despite his strong interest in physiology, his doctoral research, under the mentorship of Bernard Spilka, involved relationships among minorities. His data collection was done in small churches, while waiting for prayers to end and interviewing individuals of many racial backgrounds. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Denver in 1959. During this period, he also completed an internship at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, where he was supervised by Karen Machover, among others. Now married and a father, he accepted a position at Buffalo University, soon to become the State University of New York at Buffalo. The position in Buffalo involved founding a lab that would explore the physiological aspects of psychological processes. It was an opportunity for Irving to return to thefieldof research on stress, which he had temporarily abandoned. However, in 1961, when the Kennedy administration passed the law establishing Community Mental Health Centers, Irving was asked to write the grants that would enable the

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university to replace an aging and inadequate system of psychiatric services in the area. His work with architects and other professionals led to the building of a major center and a revolution in providing services. Eventually, he was invited to Albany to work on a statewide program that included retraining of staff and addressing the stigma often attributed to psychiatric patients. In 1974, the Commissioner of Mental Health in Massachusetts was searching for staff to implement new commurüty-based services and reduced hospitalization. Irving was hired and became thefirstpsychologist to head a state hospital in Massachusetts, perhaps the first nationwide. His approach included the initiation and support of a "consent decree" that required a judge's oversight of the hospital and provided a way to receive financial support to improve services and facilities (e.g., halfway houses). He was instrumental in the development of the law of "least restrictive alternatives" in Massachusetts. This law gave patients therightto be treated in the community rather than in hospitals whenever possible and obligated the state Department of Mental Health to provide such services. He left the position after a controversy during which he refused to discharge patients without appropriate resources in the community. Irving was next hired as the director of the Hillcrest Children's Psychiatric Center in Washington, DC. The center, which had been established in 1815 by DoUy Madison, was at that time (1980) in a difficult neighborhood and provided a questionable level of services. As director he reluctantly concluded that the best way to provide services for tlie local children was to close the institution and support better services in other places. The decision resulted in threats on his life, but he oversaw the closing of the institution and facilitated a smooth transition of its patient population to the community. Irving eventually returned to Massachusetts (1985), this time being hired as director of outpatient mental health services for the Human Resource Institute (HRI), a private institution and currently one of the largest providers of behavioral health services in Massachusetts. His work at HRI lasted over a decade and ended only as a result of managed care and the for-profit owner's imposing strict earnings-based criteria for the delivery of services. After that, Irving declined further administrative work and devoted his remaining working years to the private practice of clinical psychology. Irving Jacobs died on May 26, 2013, in Boston, at the age of 84. He is survived by his wife Gila Kornfeld-Jacobs, also a psychologist, three sons, and three grandchildren. Chris Khellaf Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, Jessup, Maryland Gila Kornfeld-Jacobs Northeastern University (retired)

April 2014 • American Psychologist © 2014 American Psychological Association 0003-066X/14/$I2.00 Vol. 69, No. 3, 302 DOI; 10.1037/a0035642

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Irving Aaron Jacobs (1929-2013).

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