Thomas Harry David ArieCBE, FRCPsych, FRCP, FFPH (9 August 1933 – 24 May 2020) was a British old age psychiatrist, described as "one of the founding fathers of old age psychiatry."[1]
He set up a psychiatric unit for old people at Goodmayes Hospital in 1969.[3] In a 1996 interview, he recalled:[4]
A job was advertised at a place I had never heard of, Goodmayes Hospital, to set up a psychiatric service for old people. I thought, this is really back to what I'm after, going to an un-posh place in the outer East End of London, seeing if one could make a service for old people tick. So that's what I did. Most people thought I had taken leave of my senses. I started work on January 1, 1969. Up the road at Claybury Hospital there was Brice Pitt, who was about two years ahead of me in setting up an old age service – I think his work had given the idea to the Goodmayes people. The people at Goodmayes had been puzzled – who could this chap be who had opted to come out of the teaching hospital to look after old people whom nobody wanted? It somewhat rocked my confidence, everybody being so negative about it.
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