Obituary: Dr P. H. Connell

P. H. CONNELL was a prominent figure, nationally and internationally, in the study of drug addiction in its clinical, scientific and service management aspects.

In his youth he achieved fame by demonstrating that amphetamine can cause an illness similar to, yet clearly distinct from, schizophrenia. A fascination with the decision-making processes in professional and organisational hierarchies, together with high administrative skills and a liking for fair debate, made him a welcome member, and often chairman, of a host of important committees, councils and boards concerned with drug addiction and more general aspects of psychiatry and medicine.

Phil Connell was born in 1921 in Yorkshire, into a talented musical family. His grandfather was the organist at Selby Abbey; and his aunt Bertha, a music teacher, introduced him to the piano, at which he became proficient. Music was everywhere and everything in the household, and Connell was an eager participant. He loved it and from his early days contemplated a musical career. But money was tight and it was not until he was in his twenties that a legacy enabled him to make a choice. By that time the decision was between music and medicine, and he chose to make a hobby rather than a career of music.

Looking back, that was clearly the right choice from medicine's point of view, and probably right also for Connell. He enrolled in St Barthol- omew's Medical College, London, and qualified at the age of 30 - something of a late developer, but a considerable growth spurt was to follow.

After pre and post registration experience he was accepted for postgraduate training in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, in London - in those days a keenly disciplined and immensely stimulating place. By the end of three years Connell had not only grasped the basics of psychiatric knowledge: he had advanced it in a significant sense.

At that time, as now, amphetamine in its various forms was often misused. It was also an accepted symptomatic treatment for depressive illness. With the best imaginable scientific methods - including the then novel use of paper chromatography to detect amphetamine in the urine - Connell identified amphetamine psychosis as a clear-cut clinical entity.

Within six years of qualifying he had completed his MD thesis and a historic monograph on the subject, Amphetamine Psychosis (1959), and was appointed consultant in charge of developing a new psychiatric service for children and adolescents at the Newcastle General Hospital in Association with King's College, Durham University (now Newcastle University)

Six years on, having set up the unit, he left it in working order and accepted a consultant appointment at the Maudsley, which he held until his retirement in 1986. His more than two decades of work there started with child and adolescent psychiatry and soon shifted its main focus as he pioneered a new unit for drug abuse, clinical research and treatment.

During this time - and for a decade after his retirement - Connell's practice embraced what would now be seen as three specialities of psychiatry: work with children and adolescents; with people who became dependent on drugs; and with children and adults who became involved with the courts, particularly the Family Division. Associated with all these aspects of clinical practice, there was a good deal of teaching and research, and many publications. It was a pretty distinguished career. But there is more to be said.

Since his earliest years in medicine Connell was involved in organisation and policy. Chairman of the Junior Common Room at St Stephen's Hospital (for his early general medical experience), he later held the same office when he was a trainee registrar at the Maudsley. In both he initiated procedures for liaison between junior staff and senior consultants and managers. Soon after his return to the Maudsley he was elected Secretary to the Medical Committee and ultimately Vice-Chairman and Chairman.

On the international scene, his work on amphetamines gave him an entree to the whole world of medicine: he travelled, and was invited to sit on WHO committees and to act as rapporteur. At home he gave evidence to the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction and became a member of the committee chaired by Baroness Wootton which reported on the use of cannabis.

In due course he became a member, and for six years (1982-88) chairman of the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), a statutory body set up under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to advise ministers on matters relating to drug misuse. A colleague on the ACMD has described Connell's chairmanship as having secured a highly successful period for this multi-professional group, previously chaired by a non-clinician and often riven by problems of communication, personal jealousy and security. With care and courtesy Connell listened and responded generously to the whole range of opinion, withstood political pressures, and superbly and creatively brought about consensus.

He also played leading roles in the many other UK organisations concerned with addiction, and in taking steps to harmonise their work.

Outside drug dependence he was busy with other aspects of organisation and management in clinical medicine. He held several important offices in the Royal College of Psychiatrists, including Vice-President. As a member of the General Medical Council he was the Preliminary Screener for Health Procedures (for investigating doctors who are thought to be unwell) for nine years.

For many others one might have suspected, with reason, that so many outside activities were undertaken to distract attention from weariness of the primary responsibilities of a hospital consultant. But Connell was a tremendously hard worker, personally very well organised, and his own clinical research unit remained throughout under his close supervision.

His was a curious career, shaped to some extent by his early research work and his resulting deep involvement in the addiction scene as it developed, during his working lifetime, as a public health problem of ever-increasing complexity. He was also much influenced - perhaps more than most of us - by largely concealed aspects of his character. He had a tremendous appetite, almost an addiction, for power and influence in medical organisations, especially those which had an interface with public and legal affairs. However, no matter how much his efforts to gain and utilise power were based on self-interest, they were directed towards the benefit of patients, and to the service of doctors responsible for them.

He had a good conceit of himself and could be quite boastful, as if he was rather incredulous about how good he really was. He could also be very stubborn. A tough and sometimes barbed exterior protected a soft centre - when interviewed a few years ago be said he thought that one of his weaknesses was that he liked to be wanted and to help, and for that reason he had not been single-minded. He liked to see himself as a facilitator, and in that capacity he was successful over and over again.

Phil Connell was large and genial, generous and companionable, essentially a simple person and not, despite his achievements, a sophisticate. It was impossible to restrain him from speechifying at meetings and dinners. He enjoyed mingling with the great and the good, but he was also quite a private person - at his happiest when with his second wife Celia, with whom he had a wonderful marriage over 25 years, and with his two sons from a previous marriage.

Robert Cawley

Philip Henry Connell, psychiatrist: born Selby, Yorkshire 1921; Registrar then Senior Registrar, Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital 1953-57, Physician 1963-86 (Emeritus); Consultant Psychiatrist, Newcastle General Hospital and Physician in Charge, Child Psychiatry Unit, Newcastle General Hospital in association with King's College, Durham University, and Associate Physician, Royal Victoria Infirmary 1957-63; CBE 1986; married 1948 Marjorie Helen Gilham (two sons; marriage dissolved), 1973 Celia Harper; died London 26 July 1998.