George Winokur (February 10, 1925 - October 12, 1996) was an American psychiatrist known for seminal contributions to diagnostic criteria and to the classification and genetics of

mood disorder A mood disorder, also known as an affective disorder, is any of a group of conditions of mental and behavioral disorder where a disturbance in the person's mood is the main underlying feature. The classification is in the '' Diagnostic and St ...

Education

He obtained his M.D. degree from the

University of Maryland School of Medicine The University of Maryland School of Medicine (abbreviated UMSOM), located in Baltimore City, Maryland, U.S., is the medical school of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and is affiliated with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medi ...

in 1947. He moved to 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 ...

in 1954, becoming professor in 1966. In 1971 he moved to head the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine until 1990, remaining as emeritus professor until his death in 1996.

Contributions to psychiatry

He is known for having played a key role in the development from the 1950s of diagnostic criteria for mental disorders, particularly as a trio alongside Eli Robins and Samuel Guze. The proposals were influentially published as the so-called

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 J ...

in 1972, which became the most cited article in psychiatry and shaped the

Research Diagnostic Criteria The Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) are a collection of influential psychiatric diagnostic criteria published in late 1970s under auspices of Statistics Section NY Psychiatric Institute, authors were Spitzer, R L; Endicott J; Robins E. PMID 115 ...

and

DSM-III The ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM; latest edition: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022) is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for the classification of mental disorders using a common langu ...

of the

American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involv ...

. Winokur is also known for seminal contributions to the genetics of affective (mood) disorders, such as the inheritance of

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 ...

. He made seminal contributions, often along with Paula Clayton, to establishing a distinction between unipolar and bipolar depression, and was one of the first in America to prescribe

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid ...

for mania. He directed the "Iowa 500 studies" on the course of depression, mania and schizophrenia. He published extensively, over 400 articles and book chapters plus 20 textbooks and monographs. What is less known is that Winokur came to have significant doubts about the development of the diagnostic criteria. While he considered them an improvement, he wrote that it was a fiction that the data could speak for themselves, and that it was impossible to eliminate clinical judgment in diagnosis, or carelessness or inconsistencies in how criteria are applied.The Making of DSM-III: A Diagnostic Manual's Conquest of American Psychiatry
Hannah Decker, Oxford University Press, 13 June 2013. Chapter 3. In 1988 an article co-authored by Winokur stated: "Making up new sets of diagnostic criteria in American psychiatry has become a cottage industry with little attempt at quality control".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Winokur, George 1925 births 1996 deaths American psychiatrists 20th-century American physicians Fellows of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Washington University School of Medicine people University of Maryland School of Medicine alumni University of Iowa faculty