Marion Kenworthy and values in the history of American child psychiatry.

Marion Kenworthy (1891-1980) was a pioneering child psychiatrist, mental hygiene and child guidance leader, and early member of the American Orthopsychiatric Association (now the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice). Throughout her illustrious career, Kenworthy advocated for values in the emerging field of child psychiatry, especially around prevention of mental illness, interdisciplinary collaboration, and social justice. Kenworthy's history provides not only an illustration of the importance of values in the work related to children but also a reminder of perspectives that can get lost in the contemporary focus on individual diagnoses and treatments (especially with pharmaceuticals).

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children, 1965-1970: Emotional disturbance, race and paths not taken in child psychiatry.

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children (JCMHC) was a sprawling, multidisciplinary project that took shape in the years immediately after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Participants included child psychiatrists, educators, psychologists, social workers, philanthropists and other laypeople and professionals interested in the plight of children.

Foreign medical graduates and American psychiatry.

Graduates from foreign medical schools (FMGs) began to staff US state psychiatric hospitals after World War II, and became increasingly associated with the poor quality of those institutions. Public and professional commentary on FMGs criticized their skills and suitability for the US healthcare system in the 1970s, at the same time that state hospitals were under increasing attack. By the 1980s and 1990s, the association between international medical graduates (as they became known) and underserved populations became an argument in favour of easing restrictions on these graduates.