BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

After making aliyah in 1933, Prof. Franz Bruhl, driven by Zionist zeal, dedicated his life work to mental health in the community and was one of the leading developers of community-based mental health services in Israel. He headed Clalit’s mental health committee which included hospital directors Winnick, Weissenbek and Yafe as members. As Clalit medical director, I always participated in the deliberations of the committee and took their recommendations very seriously. Prof. Bruhl established a mental health center in Ramat Gan’s Ramat Chen Neighborhood that was the most important community-based mental health center in the country. I would often go out with Prof. Bruhl to meetings at community clinics where cases concerning the mental health of specific patients were raised by the clinic’s family physicians for discussion with the specialist. Later, other psychiatrists became very devoted to such consultations with family doctors in the community. For the development of pediatric psychiatry, we brought in two experts from abroad. One was Prof. Albert Solnit, a child psychiatrist from Yale, who spent a sabbatical in the Negev and visited kibbutzim across the region. When he visited Kibbutz Be’eri, he said to me tongue-in cheek that much to his pleasure he had not encountered even one kid who hadn’t been referred to a psychologist. The other expert was Dr. Nachama de Shalit took child psychiatric treatment forward in Jerusalem. 108 When the reform effort in mental healthcare began in 1994, it became evident that there was a significant gap between the existing, highly developed mental health arm of Clalit and those of the other three other sick funds. Under the national health insurance system that was adopted in 1995, all the sick funds would need to provide mental health services. Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital in Ra’anana 109 Clalit always gave rehabilitation medicine the place it deserves, and built the Loewenstein Hospital from our ‘Invalid Fund’. The hospital’s first director was Theodore Nachenson, 110 who is considered a pioneer in rehabilitative medicine. He worked closely together with Prof. Avi Ohri. 111 As has been mentioned, with the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Prof. Baruch Padeh and I took steps to free up hospital beds for the wounded. 112 As part of this endeavor, we shared the rehabilitation burden. We split it functionally. Persons with head injuries were hospitalized at Clalit’s Loewenstein Hospital. Other war wounded were hospitalized at the Sheba Medical Center, with the Ministry of Defense picking up the tab. 108 Dr. Nechama de Shalit-Argaman (1927-1998) studied medicine in Geneva and specialized in pediatrics. In the 1950s, she underwent a career switch to psychiatry with sub-specialization in child psychiatry. She first worked at Beer Yaakov Psychiatric Hospital, south of Tel Aviv, then in the Ramat Chen clinic directed by Prof. Bruhl. She also served on various Clalit and Ministry of Health committees on mental health matters. 109 Loewenstein Hospital was named for Yitzhak Loewenstein, one of the heads of the Labor Federation’s “Invalid Fund.” The hospital was founded by Clalit in 1945 as a tuberculosis hospital. In parallel to this, Clalit founded Feinstone House, a long-term care facility for the chronically ill that over time was transformed into a rehabilitation hospital. In 1958, the two facilities were amalgamated and the hospital’s new building was completed in west Ra’anana. Loewenstein Hospital is affiliated with Tel Aviv University’s medical school as part of its continuing education study program for doctors and is also a site for training of nurses and other health professionals. 110 Prof. Theodore Nachenson (1920-2016) was born in South America and studied medicine in Argentina. He immigrated to Israel in 1951 where, at the beginning, he was a member of Kibbutz Dalia. Feinstone House in Moshav Ramot Hashavim, not far from the town of Ra’anana, was established in 1944 to treat patients with psychiatric problems, tuberculosis, paralytic poliomyelitis, and the chronically ill. In 1959, Nachenson joined Dr. Ludwig Ginzburg at Feinstone House as a department head. Details can be found in Ohry, A., "Mavo l-Toildot ha-Refua ha- Shikumit b-Israel" (Introduction to Rehabilitation Medicine in Israel), Tel Aviv University Press, 1996. 111 Prof. Avi Ohry (1948- ) was born in Natanya, studied medicine at Tel Aviv University. He was an injured POW in Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Afterwards, he joined the military department of neuro-rehabilitation at the Sheba Medical Center under Prof. Rafi Rozin. He did specialized training in spinal cord injury (UK 1979-1980) and brain injury (US 1980). He is now a professor of rehabilitation medicine at Tel Aviv University. 112 Collaboration between Doron and Padeh is first mentioned in Chapter 4. Rehabilitation and Rehabilitation Geriatrics

67