Paul R. Mc Hugh - Career

Career

After his training, McHugh held various academic and administrative positions: Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College (where he founded the Bourne Behavioral Research Laboratory), Clinical Director and Director of Residency Education at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Westchester Division. After reportedly being passed over for the Cornell chair in favor of Robert Michels (physician), he left New York to become Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oregon.

From 1975 till 2001, McHugh was the Henry Phipps Professor of Psychiatry and the director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Johns Hopkins University. At the same time, he was psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is currently University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

His own research has focused on the neuroscientific foundations of motivated behaviors, psychiatric genetics, epidemiology, and neuropsychiatry.

During the 1960s, McHugh co-authored papers on hydrocephalus, depression and suicide, and amygdaloid stimulation.

In 1975, McHugh co-authored (along with M. F. Folstein and S. E. Folstein) a paper entitled "Mini-Mental State: A Practical Method for Grading the Cognitive State of Patients for the Clinician." This paper details the Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE), an exam consisting of just eleven questions, that quickly and accurately assesses patients for signs of dementia and other states of cognitive impairment. It is one of the most widely used tests in the mental health field.

In 1979, in his capacity as chair of the Department of Psychiatry, McHugh closed down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

In 1983, McHugh and colleague Phillip R. Slavney co-authored The Perspectives of Psychiatry, which presents the Johns Hopkins approach to psychiatry. The book "seeks to systematically apply the best work of behaviorists, psychotherapists, social scientists and other specialists long viewed as at odds with each other." A second edition was published in 1998.

In 1992, McHugh treated the then-president of The American University, Richard Berendzen who'd been accused of making obscene phone calls to a 16-year-old baby sitter in Washington, D.C.

McHugh also treated author Tom Wolfe for depression suffered following coronary bypass surgery. Wolfe dedicated his 1998 novel, A Man in Full to McHugh, “whose brilliance, comradeship and unfailing kindness saved the day.”

In 1992, McHugh announced that he was going to leave Johns Hopkins and accept a position as director and CEO of Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine quickly sought to retain him and was successful in doing so.

Throughout the decade of the 1990s, McHugh was active in debunking the idea of recovered memory—that is, the idea that people could suddenly and spontaneously remember childhood sexual abuse.

In 2001, McHugh was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Presidential Council on Bioethics. The Council was charged with the task of making recommendations as to what the U.S. federal government's policy regarding embryonic stem cells should be. McHugh was against using new lines of embryonic stem cells derived from in vitro fertilization but was in favor of the use of stem cells derived from somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In SCNT, the nucleus of a cell is removed and replaced by another cell nucleus. McHugh felt that cells created in this fashion could be regarded as tissue; whereas, stem cells taken from embryos caused the killing of an unborn child.

In 2002, McHugh was appointed to a lay panel assembled by the Roman Catholic Church to look into sexual abuse by priests.

In 2010, McHugh made a motion in United States District Court, Northern District of California, to file an amicus curiae brief in the case of Perry et al. v. Schwarzenegger et al. that stated in part: "Amicus seeks to provide information to this Court bearing on its decision of whether to endorse a legal declaration that orientation is a fixed and immutable characteristic similar to race or gender. In the proposed brief, Amicus points out two highly relevant facts: (1) there is no scientific consensus on what homosexuality is, and the number of people who fit in the class “gay and lesbian” varies widely, depending on which definition of homosexuality is used and (2) there is no scientific consensus that homosexuality is exclusively or primarily genetic in origin."