Professor Ian Brockington MD, FRCP

Professor Ian Brockington

Professor emeritus, University of Birmingham

Contact details

Address
Lower Brockington Farm
Bredenbury
Bromyard
Herefordshire
HR7 4TE

As professor emeritus in the University of Birmingham, he is writing a series of monographs on the psychiatry of motherhood. In 2001, he established Eyry Press, which publishes hand-crafted books.

Qualifications

  • FRC Psych
  • FRCP (London)
  • MD (Cantab)
  • M Phil (London)
  • MB, BChir (Cantab)

Biography

Born 1935 in Chillington, Devon, he was educated at Winchester College and Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, followed by Manchester Medical School.

Since 1969, he has been married to Diana née Pink (a tribunal judge), and is father to Daniel, Alice, Grace and Samuel (all of whom hold university posts) and grandfather to Rozalia, Emily, Benjamin and Ellen.

After house surgeon and house physician posts, he spent 4 years at University College Hospital, Ibadan, alternating with training posts at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (with Professor Goodwin). This resulted in articles on African cardiopathies and an M D thesis on Nigerian ‘Heart Muscle Disease’. In 1969 he switched to psychiatry, training at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. Between 1972 and 1975 he worked with Kendell on the classification of the psychoses. In 1975-82, as Senior Lecturer in Manchester, he worked on the methodology of clinical research, and developed an interest in the psychiatry of motherhood, especially disorders of the mother-infant relationship. In 1980-1981, he held visiting professorships at the Universities of Chicago (1980-1) and Washington University in St Louis (1981).  From 1983 until retirement in 2001 he held the Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Birmingham.  In 1988, he was Cottman Fellow at Monash University in Australia, and in 2000 locum tenens Consultant at the Mother & Baby unit in Christchurch, New Zealand.   After retirement he held visiting professorships at the Universities of Nagoya (2002) and Kumamoto (2003) in Japan. In 2009 he chaired a WPA Taskforce on child protection and the promotion of mental health in the children of parents with psychiatric disorders.

Teaching

Between 1983 and 2001 he was responsible for teaching psychiatry to about 3,000 Birmingham medical students, as well as running postgraduate programmes for many trainee psychiatrists.

Research

His present research is on the long term course of puerperal psychosis. He is researching the psychoses of childbearing. This includes a long term follow-up of patients with puerperal psychosis and, under the title Action on Menstrual Psychosis, an international panel of sufferers, formed to provide support and promote research

Other activities

From 1987 he developed, in the West Midlands, a community-based clinical service for mentally ill mothers, which received >500 referrals/year, backed by a purpose-built in-patient mother-and-baby unit and day hospital.

He was founder (with others, 1980) and first President (1982-4) of the Marcé Society (1980), and founder (1993) and first Chairman of the Section on Women's Mental Health in the World Psychiatric Association. 

Publications

Brockington I F (1996) Motherhood and Mental Health, Oxford, Oxford University Press (links 1 & 2).

Brockington I F (2006) Eileithyia’s Mischief: the Organic Psychoses of Pregnancy, Parturition and the Puerperium, Bredenbury, Eyry Press (links 3 &4).

Brockington I F and 15 others (2006) The Birmingham Interview for Maternal Mental Health, Bredenbury, Eyry Press.

Brockington I F (2008) Menstrual Psychosis and the Catamenial Process, Bredenbury, Eyry Press (links 5 & 6).

Brockington I F (2011) Maternal Rejection of the Young Child: Present Status of the Clinical Syndrome.  Psychopathology (published electronically, printed form imminent).

Brockington I, Chandra P, Dubowitz H, Jones D, Moussa S, Nakku J, Quadros Ferre I (2011). W P A guidance on the protection and promotion of mental health in children of persons with severe mental disorders. World Psychiatry 10: 93-102.  

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