Helen Boyle

Alice Helen Anne Boyle (19 November 1869 – 20 November 1957) was an Irish-British physician and psychiatrist. She was Brighton's first female general practitioner, and the first female president of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association (now the Royal College of Psychiatrists). Boyle had a passion for helping women with mental illness in poverty and used this to begin an era of proper treatment for mental disorders.

Early life and education Helen Boyle was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1869, and studied in France and Germany, before moving to England in 1887. She studied at the London School of Medicine for Women from 1890 to 1893, under Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. While there, she became the first psychiatrist to identify bacillary dysentery among mental health patients in the facility. Boyle later became the medical superintendent at Canning Town Mission Hospital in the East End of London. As a result of the first hand experience she gained in working with mentally ill women in poverty, she was inspired to start her own facility. The building still hosts a mental health clinic, supporting people over 65 who are undergoing early signs of psychosis. 101 Round Hill Crescent, formerly the Lewes Road Dispensary for Women and Children, founded by Helen Boyle in 1897. The Lady Chichester was the only hospital in Brighton to provide inpatient care at the time. Boyle also treated the outsider artist Madge Gill in 1922, and she seems to have supported her in her ambitions to display her works.

Boyle worked at this facility for fifty years and remained an integral part of the practice through location changes and expansions. In 1910, she was the only woman to speak during a discussion organised by Farquhar Buzzard about anxiety, depression and cyclothymia. During the First World War, from 1914 to 1918, she worked in Serbia with the Royal Free Hospital Unit along with James Berry, and after the war, she was awarded the Queen Elisabeth Medal and the Order of St.Sava. In 1955 the association held their spring meeting in Brighton, to commemorate 50 years of The Lady Chichester Hospital. She was also involved in the creation of the Guardianship Society (1913), the Medical Women's Federation (1917), the International Medical Women's Federation (1922), The Child Guidance Council, and the National Association for Mental Health (now known as Mind).

Personal life Boyle never married or had children, but she lived with her long-time companion, Marguerite du Pre Gore Lindsay, for the final seventeen years of her life. She was a pioneer in mental health care for women.

In 2015, a blue plaque at Aldrington House was erected for her, and a Brighton & Hove bus has been named in her honour.

Awards and honours Queen Elisabeth Medal Order of St.Sava