Winfred Overholser

Winfred Overholser (1892 – October 6, 1964) was an American psychiatrist, president of the American Psychiatric Association, and for 25 years the superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital, a federal institution for the mentally ill in Washington, D.C.

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1892, Winfred Overholser graduated from Harvard College in 1912 and received a medical degree from Boston University in 1916.

He was Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Diseases and worked with the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in New York.

He campaigned for recognition of alcoholism as a mental disease, calling it in 1940 "the greatest public health problem which is not being scientifically attacked. He was instrumental in Pound's release in 1958, after reporting that there was a "strong probability" that criminal insanity explained his crime and that "further confinement can serve no therapeutic purpose."

Overholser retired in 1962 after 25 years as superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital where under his administration the hospital pioneered the use of "group therapy, tranquillizing drugs and psychodrama."

Boston University award him its alumni medal in 1962. He received as well the United States Selective Service Medal. France awarded him its Legion of Honor and Medal of Liberation.

He died on October 6, 1964. His wife and three children survived him.

Works Psychiatry and the Courts in Massachusetts (1928) Handbook of Psychiatry (1947) The Psychiatrist and the Law (1953) Twenty Years of Psychodrama at Saint Elizabeths Hospital (NY: Beacon House, 1960), with James M Enneis Centennial Papers, St. Elizabeths Hospital, 1855-1955 (Washington: Centennial Commission, Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, 1956]) History of Money (self-published) Libertyville, Ill., 1936.