Max Glatt

Max Meier Glatt (26 January 191214 May 2002) was a German British psychiatrist and addiction expert. A survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, he went on to become a prominent expert in the treatment of addiction in the United Kingdom. When he tried to flee to the Netherlands after the November pogrom in 1938, he was arrested at the border and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. He made significant breakthroughs in the development of the "Jellinek curve" of alcoholic addiction.

Glatt treated HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs' addicts, and such was the success of his programmes that the prison's football team was nicknamed the "Glatt Dynamos". His approach of creating a "therapeutic community" with a 12-week inpatient stay to help patents come to terms with their problems and explore new methods of living in the future without their addiction was found to be a great success. it moved again in 2000. It is currently run by the Central North West London Mental Health NHS Trust Substance Misuses Service.

He was one of the scientists who early on postulated that alcohol addiction was a disease and lobbied the World Health Organization to this end.

In 1962, Glatt took over as editor of the British Journal of Addiction, a position he held for fifteen years. The therapeutic community he founded is now known as the "Max Glatt Unit".

Publications (selection)