The following was circulated in the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology:

Sunday afternoon, September 3, 2006, we lost an outstanding leader of psychiatric research and a wonderful person. Wayne Fenton, M.D. was found dead in his office, the victim of a homicide while providing an urgent consultation to a 19-year-old psychotic patient. During his tenure at Chestnut Lodge, Dr. Fenton and Dr. Tom McGlashan conducted the influential long-term follow-up study of Lodge patients which clarified the limitations of therapeutics for schizophrenia. In his role as Director and CEO of Chestnut Lodge Hospital he transformed that institution from a long stay hospital with a focus on intensive psychotherapy for schizophrenia into a modern facility providing integrated psychosocial and pharmacotherapy for severely ill persons.

He joined NIMH in 1999, and during the past two years he has served as both Director of the Division of Adult Translational Research and Associate Director for Clinical Affairs. He provided the leadership that enabled NIMH to define the unmet treatment...  Read more

The following was circulated in the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology:

Sunday afternoon, September 3, 2006, we lost an outstanding leader of psychiatric research and a wonderful person. Wayne Fenton, M.D. was found dead in his office, the victim of a homicide while providing an urgent consultation to a 19-year-old psychotic patient. During his tenure at Chestnut Lodge, Dr. Fenton and Dr. Tom McGlashan conducted the influential long-term follow-up study of Lodge patients which clarified the limitations of therapeutics for schizophrenia. In his role as Director and CEO of Chestnut Lodge Hospital he transformed that institution from a long stay hospital with a focus on intensive psychotherapy for schizophrenia into a modern facility providing integrated psychosocial and pharmacotherapy for severely ill persons.

He joined NIMH in 1999, and during the past two years he has served as both Director of the Division of Adult Translational Research and Associate Director for Clinical Affairs. He provided the leadership that enabled NIMH to define the unmet treatment needs in schizophrenia and create the MATRICS and TURNS process focused on drug discovery for cognition impairments in schizophrenia. He also initiated the process that defined negative symptoms as a priority for drug discovery, emphasizing the poor functional outcomes associated with these two pathologies. He successfully brought academic scientists, NIMH leadership, pharmaceutical industry scientists, and FDA leaders together in an effort to accelerate drug discovery for schizophrenia. These accomplishments are central to the interest of the ACNP, and many of our members have participated in these programs with Dr. Fenton’s leadership.

Wayne was not a member of the ACNP, but he has set a scientific agenda and process in place that is central to the ACNP mission. He was a terrific person. His death is a tremendous loss to the field, and a deep personal loss to all of us who have known him.

With the greatest sadness,

William T. Carpenter Jr., M.D.
President-elect
American College of Neuropsychopharmacology

This eulogy was given at a memorial service for Wayne Fenton on September 7, 2006.

My name is Tom McGlashan, a friend and colleague of Wayne Fenton’s. I also speak for my wife Patricia.

Wayne has touched all of us in many ways—so many ways it is hard to condense in a few words. I will focus on the parts around which he and I interacted the most—his work.

Wayne Fenton entered my life when he came to Chestnut Lodge Hospital in the mid-1980s. His arrival was one of the best things that ever happened to me. He came to Chestnut Lodge in part drawn by a research follow-up study I had begun there. I was excited because his arrival doubled the size of our research department. But I was also nervous, never having been a mentor, never having had a mentee. But I didn’t have to worry for long. He was a natural. He didn’t need much guidance. Before I knew it, the research department was producing more than double its prior output. In what seemed like no time, a dozen papers emerged from the department and floated forth with almost uncontested peer-review...  Read more

This eulogy was given at a memorial service for Wayne Fenton on September 7, 2006.

My name is Tom McGlashan, a friend and colleague of Wayne Fenton’s. I also speak for my wife Patricia.

Wayne has touched all of us in many ways—so many ways it is hard to condense in a few words. I will focus on the parts around which he and I interacted the most—his work.

Wayne Fenton entered my life when he came to Chestnut Lodge Hospital in the mid-1980s. His arrival was one of the best things that ever happened to me. He came to Chestnut Lodge in part drawn by a research follow-up study I had begun there. I was excited because his arrival doubled the size of our research department. But I was also nervous, never having been a mentor, never having had a mentee. But I didn’t have to worry for long. He was a natural. He didn’t need much guidance. Before I knew it, the research department was producing more than double its prior output. In what seemed like no time, a dozen papers emerged from the department and floated forth with almost uncontested peer-review blessings—a collection referred to occasionally as the Fenton series of the Chestnut Lodge Follow-up Study, each paper a solid contribution to our knowledge about the diagnosis and the course of schizophrenia and its manifestations over long periods of time.

Wayne repeated such bursts of creative research many times and across several domains such as developing psychosocial treatments for schizophrenia, introducing psychoactive drugs and drug research to Chestnut Lodge, including the first use of clozapine in Maryland. He became an expert in institutional care such that when Dexter Bullard Jr. passed on, it was natural for Wayne to assume leadership of Chestnut Lodge. While running the hospital he was also—sort of on the side—collaborating with Montgomery County in a research project testing alternatives to institutional treatment. Such was the scope of his pluralistic vision. The way he saw it, one thing never worked for everyone. For some, an institution was therapeutic; for others it was toxic. The answers about what “works” were not clear or simple, but Wayne always tried his best to answer them, to try out new ideas, to try.

I left Chestnut Lodge in 1990 to run the Yale Psychiatric Institute, and I tried several times to get Wayne to New Haven to continue our collaboration. He had received his training in psychiatry at Yale and was always nostalgic about the place. But every time I called in earnest, his phone was off the hook, and I realized he would never leave Montgomery County. When Chestnut Lodge closed in the late 1990s, how fortunate it was for NIMH that it was located in Montgomery County! Wayne only had to move from West Montgomery Avenue to Executive Boulevard—to the good fortune of Steve Hyman and Tom Insel and company, and to the good fortune of American psychiatry. Another of his sustained bursts of creativity ensued. This time it was of orchestral magnitude and complexity, weaving together his well-honed talents in research, clinical care, and administration. I cannot detail his many initiatives because I was not there, but I do know that his impact on the extramural research field has been substantial because I live and work in that field, and the number of times I heard colleagues utter Wayne’s name in awe, and occasionally in vain, assured me that he was still in Montgomery County and still larger than Montgomery County.

An abiding legacy of Chestnut Lodge was that Wayne loved seeing patients who were seriously ill. He was tenaciously dedicated to schizophrenia, from unraveling the mystery of its origins to treating people with the disorder. It was this dedication which unfortunately is at the root of our gathering here in shock and mourning. This time, Wayne encountered the disorder at its typical debut in the brain and mind of a youth. This time, however, the disorder took two lives, not one. Wayne’s name is now inscribed on the vertiginous wall of doctors who died at the hands of the disorder they were trying to treat. The patient’s name is not likely to achieve the same outcome. He is alive, but what he has lost to the disorder may well be the subject of a lifetime of mourning. I know Wayne would regard this as the antithesis of everything he was trying to achieve, because we know that he never gave up the effort to understand and treat the sickest among us.

Nor should we ever give up. To finish, I would like to read a note Wayne’s family received two days ago from one of Wayne’s former patients. It shows what he showed many times—good things can happen, too.

To Doctor Fenton
Who helped me in my time of need and led me to the way of a happier life. To his loving wife and children whom he loved dearly and to his love for the better of others. His memory will never be forgotten! To those who knew him, you know how great a man he was. To those who didn’t, may you try to understand that this man was a hero to many.
Love, a patient

Erminio will be missed by many, including me. My first encounter with Erminio was as a graduate student attending my first scientific meeting— a Catecholamine Gordon conference at Asilomar. His enthusiasm, firey disposition and commitment to science was an inspiration! My condolences to his family and special thoughts to Sandro ...

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