About

In the early 1980’s, New Hampshire Health and Human Services executives identified geriatrics and mental health as priorities to address as part of their overall mission of deinstitutionalization for people with developmental disabilities and complex mental health conditions.

They also identified an aging population boom, thanks to advances in medical care. They projected an added need for geriatric and psychiatric services at the same time they were committed to replacing the institutional monolithic models with decentralized, community based services and facilities.

Richard Lippincott, MD and Don Shumway were running the NH Division of Mental Health and Dr. Lippincott had an acquaintance in Pittsburgh, Norman White, MD, a surgeon-turned psychiatrist. A plan to develop geriatric psychiatry departments in community hospitals was discussed by the psychiatrists, and Mr. Shumway approved.

Dr. White and I were seeing aging Veterans at a VA psychiatric hospital and we were fascinated by WW II Vets with combined medical and mental health needs. I was finishing a dissertation about Agent Orange and Vietnam Veterans for the Doctor of Public Health degree.

Norman said, “Let’s go to New Hampshire. There’s an ocean, lots of mountains and we’ll invent geropsychiatry.“

On Veterans Day 1984, we admitted the first patient to the first geriatric psychiatry unit in a community hospital in New England.

When Alzheimer’s came along, Dr. White, recognizing its incurable nature, made a career change. I saw an opportunity to develop assisted living communities where care and comfort, rather than cure, would guide the practice.

I opened Bellamy Fields in 2005 and Watson Fields in 2009.

Dr. White died in 2023 in San Luis Obispo Ca. at the age of 90.

Seacoast Geriatrics is my next adventure…