John ‘Jack’ McDermott: Psychiatrist created curriculum for UH students

As founding chairman of the John A. Burns School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, John “Jack” McDermott not only brought high-level psychiatric training to the state, but also ensured that the practice, and its practitioners, reflected the rich cultural diversity of Hawaii.

McDermott died Dec. 6 at age 85.

A gifted child psychiatrist whose scholarly interests spanned everything from the efficacy of pet therapy to the psychopathology of Emily Dickinson to the implications of “Star Wars” as a modern developmental fairy tale, McDermott is remembered by family, friends and colleagues as the rare person whose intellectual capabilities met the challenge of his worldly curiosity.

“He had a real joie de vivre,” said daughter Beth McDermott. “He was constantly reading, sometimes three or four books at a time. He kept up with news and technology, but he was also interested in popular culture.”

McDermott was born in Hartford, Conn., and was educated at Cornell University and New York Medical College. After serving as chief of neuropsychiatry at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Florida, he took a position as a tenured professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Michigan.

While at Michigan, McDermott experimented with bringing a dog into the clinical setting to see how his young patients would react. The groundbreaking work was the basis of the Elizabeth Yates book “Skeezer, Dog With a Mission,” which was later adapted to film.

In 1969 the University of Hawaii recruited McDermott to help turn its two-year medical school into a full degree-granting program. Working with Walter Char, McDermott created a four-year psychiatry curriculum for medical students and reorganized existing programs at the Hawaii State Hospital and the Queen’s Medical Center into a single four-year program at JABSOM.

“It was the challenge of a lifetime, and McDermott proved himself more than up to the task,” said Dr. Jerris Hedges, the medical school dean.

Under McDermott’s leadership, the psychiatry program added training programs in general psychiatry, adolescent psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry, eventually becoming the state’s largest organized group of practicing psychiatrists.

McDermott found meaning in his cultural surroundings and was devoted to developing indigenous models of practice. One of his most influential early projects in his adopted home was serving as psychiatry consultant for Mary Kawena Pukui’s “Nana i ke Kumu (Look to the Source), Vol. II.”

“Dad’s work with Mary Kawena Pukui shortly after arriving in Hawaii was, I think, a gateway that launched his lifelong commitment to Hawaii and Hawaiians and his passion for promoting community-based, culturally grounded approaches to understanding and healing mental illness nationally and internationally,” said Beth McDermott. “He relentlessly sought out and championed bright young docs, both men and women, who understood the importance of context — social, cultural, political and historical — to their practice.”

Among McDermott’s notable proteges was Dr. Naleen Andrade, the first female Native Hawaiian psychiatrist and head of graduate medical education at JABSOM.

“He was my great mentor,” said Andrade, who co-edited with McDermott the book “People and Cultures of Hawai‘i: The Evolution of Culture and Ethnicity.”

“During his final decade as department chair, 18 percent of the graduating psychiatrists from our training programs were Native Hawaiian,” she said. “He significantly improved mental health care in Hawaii, especially for underserved populations.”

In collaboration with many of his former charges, McDermott conducted unprecedented epidemiological research on the mental health status of Hawaiian youths.

His work reached far beyond local shores. McDermott served as chairman of the child psychiatry section of the World Psychiatric Association for a dozen years and helped to introduce child psychiatry to Indonesia in the early 1970s, establishing a partnership between UH and the University of Indonesia that still continues.

McDermott’s impact on the profession was also realized through his tenure as editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and his prolific publishing career, which included his contribution as co-editor to the seminal text “Childhood Psychopathology,” and authorship of a dozen books on psychiatry.

McDermott retired from UH in 1995, a decision that did nothing to stem his productivity as a scholar and educator. Just before he died, McDermott published an article on the death of King David Kalakaua for the Hawaiian Journal of History and was working on a TED Talk about the brain.

“He never really retired,” Beth McDermott said. “They gave him the koa chair, but I don’t think he ever used it.”

In addition to daughter Beth, McDermott is survived by wife Sally, son John and three grandchildren.

Services will be held at 3 p.m. Jan. 10 at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church. In lieu of flowers, donations to JABSOM’s endowed professorship in psychiatry, which honors McDermott, Char and Andrade, may be made at uhfoundation.org/ McDermott.