Career
Shepherd began his psychiatric career at The Maudsley Hospital in 1947. In 1954 he obtained his Doctorate in Medicine from Oxford University, his thesis being a study of the pattern of major psychoses in the county of Buckinghamshire during two periods, 1931–33 and 1945-47. In 1956 he joined the staff of the Institute of Psychiatry as a Senior Lecturer, and then in 1961 he was appointed to the Institute's Readership in Psychiatry. In 1967 he had conferred on him a personal chair of epidemiological psychiatry, the first of its kind in the world. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1970 and a Foundation Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1971. He established the General Practice Research Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry in the late 1950s and continued to direct its activities until his retirement in 1988. He was also the founder editor of the journal Psychological Medicine and he was awarded the CBE in 1989. During his career he also became a Fellow of both the American Public Health Association and the American Psychological Association.
Shepherd was heavily influenced during his early years at The Maudsley by Aubrey Lewis, who taught that the precise and well-organised collection of social data should become a new activity for the psychiatrist rather than limiting himself to the clinical study of the individual patient. Shepherd’s close working relationship with Lewis later resulted in a careful documentation of Lewis' legacies to psychiatry in his remarkable biographies. With the exception of one year's attachment to the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1955-56, Shepherd remained at The Maudsley for the entire duration of his professional career.
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