Paula Jean Clayton (December 1, 1934 – September 4, 2021) was an American psychiatrist. She was the first female chairperson of a major psychiatric department in the United States. She is known for destigmatising mental illness, rigorous data driven research methods to study psychiatry, especially depression and

bipolar disorder Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...

Early life and education

Paula Jean Limberg was born on December 1, 1934, in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

. She was one of three daughters born to Oscar Limberg and his wife, Dorothea Pflasterer. Her father worked for a clothing company, and her mother was a suffragist. She married Charles Clayton, and enrolled at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

as a pre-medicine student, and graduated in 1956. She returned to her hometown to attend the

Washington University School of Medicine Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine has 1,260 students, 604 of which are pursuing a medical degree with or ...

. Clayton was one of four women to graduate from WUSM in 1960. She had a child during her fourth year of medicl school which influenced her to choose a residency in psychiatry instead of internal medicine.

Career

Clayton worked as an intern at St. Luke’s Hospital and subsequently specialized in psychiatry during her residency at Barnes and Renard Hospitals. From 1964 to 1965, Clayton was chief resident. Upon completing her residency, Clayton joined the WUSM faculty. At WUSM, Clayton worked closely with

Eli Robins Eli Robins (1921 Texas – 1994 Washington) was an American psychiatrist who played a pivotal role in establishing the way mental disorders are researched and diagnosed today. Early career Robins finished his medical training and residencies at Ha ...

, George Winokur, Samuel Guze, and Ted Reich to develop what became known as the

Feighner Criteria The Feighner Criteria are a set of influential psychiatric diagnostic criteria developed at Washington University in St. Louis between the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The criteria are named after a psychiatric paper published in 1972 of which Jo ...

, a psychiatric diagnostic criteria based on the

medical model ''Medical model'' is the term coined by psychiatrist R. D. Laing in his ''The Politics of the Family and Other Essays'' (1971), for the "set of procedures in which all doctors are trained". It includes complaint, history, physical examinat ...

, moving psychiatry away from

introspection Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...

and

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

. She was promoted to full professor in 1976. In 1980, four years later, Clayton became the first woman in the United States to chair a department of psychiatry, when she left for the

University of Minnesota Medical School The University of Minnesota Medical School is the medical school of the University of Minnesota. It is a combination of two campuses situated in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota. The University of Minnesota Medical School is also part of one of ...

. In 1999, Clayton stepped down from UM. Between 2001 and 2005, Clayton was a part-time professor of psychiatry at the

University of New Mexico School of Medicine The University of New Mexico School of Medicine (UNM School of Medicine) is a division of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (UNM HSC) located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The UNM School of Medicine is home to a variety of degree-g ...

. From 2006 to 2014, she was based in New York City, and served the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention as its medical director. The ''

Journal of Affective Disorders The ''Journal of Affective Disorders'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering research on all aspects of affective disorders. It is published by Elsevier and its editors-in-chief are P. Brambilla and J.C. Soares. It was established in 1979 an ...

'' published a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

to commemorate Clayton's career in 2006.

Personal life

Paula Clayton had a daughter and two sons with Charles Clayton, whom she later divorced. In 2015, Clayton retired and moved to

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...

, where she died on September 4, 2021, of a viral infection.

Legacy

Paula Clayton worked to destigmatise mental illness and "was the first person to demonstrate, through research, that

bereavement Grief is the response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or some living thing that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, grief also has physical, cogniti ...

, while phenotypically mirroring the symptoms of depressive illness, is a distinct, non-clinical entity". As a female chair of the University of Minnesota's Department of Psychiatry in 1980, Clayton brought equality to the department, including equal pay, raising female faculty members’ salaries to match their male counterparts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clayton, Paula 1934 births 2021 deaths American psychiatrists American women psychiatrists University of Michigan alumni Washington University School of Medicine alumni Scientists from St. Louis 20th-century American women physicians 20th-century American physicians Physicians from Missouri Infectious disease deaths in California Washington University School of Medicine faculty University of Minnesota faculty