{{Short description|American neurologist and psychiatrist (1923–2025)|bot=PearBOT 5}} {{Use mdy dates|date=June 2025}} '''Maximilian Fink''' (January 16, 1923 – June 15, 2025) was an American neurologist and psychiatrist best known for his work on electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In 1985, Fink founded the journal ''Convulsive Therapy'', which is now called ''The Journal of ECT''. His early work also included studies on the effect of psychoactive drugs on brain electrical activity; his later work included books about the syndromes of catatonia and melancholia, published in the 2010s.
==Background== Fink was born in Vienna, Austria, on January 16, 1923.<ref name="Acta">P Munk-Jorgensen 2005 Biography: Max Fink, MD. ''Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica'' '''112''': 325.</ref> His parents were a physician and a social worker.<ref name="Acta"/> The family left Austria for the United States in 1924.<ref name="Times">A Kaplan 2005 Through the Times with Max Fink, M.D. ''Psychiatric Times.'' '''22''', September.</ref>
He married Martha Pearl Gross, Barnard College, class of 1949.<ref name="Times"/> They had three children, each an academic professor: Jonathan, geology, at Portland State University; Rachel at Mount Holyoke College, and Linda at Sweet Briar College.<ref name="Times"/> He had one brother who is a physician graduate of Columbia University.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}}
His early education was in New York City, receiving the B.A. at University College, New York University (1942) and M.D. at NYU Bellevue Medical Center (1945). His medical training was under the United States Army auspices and he was appointed 1st Lieutenant Army Medical Corps on graduation, serving in active military service from April 1946 to November 1947. He attended the Army School of Military Neuropsychiatry in San Antonio in 1946.<ref name="Stony Brook">http://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/psychiatry/faculty/fink_m. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140514024808/http://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/psychiatry/faculty/fink_m |date=2014-05-14 }}</ref>
Residency training in neurology and psychiatry from 1948 to 1954 was at New York's Montefiore, Bellevue, and Hillside Hospitals. He received training in electroencephalography at Mount Sinai Hospital under a fellowship of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Concurrently he attended the William Alanson White Institute of Psychoanalysis, receiving the Certificate for Physicians in 1953. He was board certified in neurology in 1952 and psychiatry in 1954.<ref name="Stony Brook"/>
Fink died in Westfield, Massachusetts, on June 15, 2025, at the age of 102.<ref>{{cite web |title=Rest in peace, Max Fink, American pioneer in electroconvulsive therapy and professor emeritus of psychiatry at @StonyBrookMed . He was 102 years old. His career spanned an incredible 70 years. |url=https://x.com/MarkLRuffalo/status/1934711621995159567 |website=Mark L. Ruffalo on X |access-date=21 June 2025 |date=16 June 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Max Fink, Champion of Electroconvulsive Therapy, Dies at 102 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/science/max-fink-dead.html |access-date=28 June 2025 |publisher=The New York Times |date=27 June 2025}}</ref>
==Academic positions, research and awards== Fink was appointed research professor of psychiatry at Washington University in 1962, at New York Medical College in 1966 and professor of psychiatry and neurology at State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1972.<ref name="Acta"/>
Early research included federal government-funded research into the changes in brain waves (electroencephalogram) induced by electroshock, antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, opiates and narcotic antagonists, and cannabis and metabolites.<ref name="Times"/> For the past fifty years, Fink's main interest was in electroconvulsive therapy.<ref name="Acta"/> Over the years, his ideas on ECT evolved from an early suggestion that the biochemical basis of ECT is similar to that of craniocerebral trauma<ref>M Fink 1958 Effect of anticholinergic agent, diethazine on EEG and behaviour: significance for theory of convulsive therapy. ''Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry'' '''80''': 380-387.</ref> through to statements that organic mental syndrome is seen in all patients following ECT but is usually transient<ref>M Fink 1986 Convulsive therapy and epilepsy research. In MR Trimble and EH Reynolds (eds.) ''What is epilepsy?'' Churchill Livingstone, 217-228.</ref> and finally to the position that ECT-induced memory loss is a hysterical symptom with parallels to the Camelford water pollution incident.<ref>M Fink 2006 The Camelford Hysteria: a lesson for ECT? ''Psychiatric Times'' '''23''', October.</ref> A specific interest compared ECT to seizures induced by flurothyl.
A good part of his academic research was in the effects of psychoactive drugs on the electroencephalogram (see Pharmaco-electroencephalography).
His most recent interest was in the syndromes of catatonia and of melancholia.<ref>M Fink 2013 Rediscovering catatonia: the biography of a treatable syndrome. ''Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica'' '''127''', Issue supplement s441, 1-47.</ref>
In 1985, Fink founded the journal ''Convulsive Therapy'' (now called the ''The Journal of ECT'').<ref name="Times"/> He was a member of the American Psychiatric Association's task forces on ECT 1975–1978 and 1987–1990.<ref name="Times"/>
Fink's awards include the Electroshock Research Association Award (1956), the László Meduna Prize of the Hungarian National Institute for Nervous and Mental Disease (1986), and Lifetime Achievement Awards of the ''Psychiatric Times'' (1995) and of the Society of Biological Psychiatry (1996),<ref name="Acta"/> Thomas William Salmon Award and Medal, New York Academy of Medicine (2011),<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Thomas W. Salmon Award and Lecture {{!}} New York Academy of Medicine|url=https://www.nyam.org/fellows-grants/grants-awards/endowed-lectures/thomas-w-salmon-award-and-lecture/|access-date=2021-01-11|website=www.nyam.org|archive-date=March 20, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220320032227/https://www.nyam.org/fellows-grants/grants-awards/endowed-lectures/thomas-w-salmon-award-and-lecture/|url-status=dead}}</ref> and the C. Charles Burlingame Award and Lecture, Institute for Living, CT (2019).<ref>{{Cite web|title=Legendary Physician Wins Institute of Living Burlingame Award {{!}} Hartford HealthCare|url=https://hartfordhealthcare.org/about-us/news-press/news-detail?articleid=22990&publicId=395|access-date=2021-01-11|website=hartfordhealthcare.org}}</ref>
==Retirement== In 1997, Fink moved to the Long Island Jewish Hillside Hospital to organize a government supported 4-hospital collaborative program examining continuation treatments in patients with major depression after successful ECT. The study group under the acronym "CORE"—Consortium on Research in ECT—has published on the merits of continuation ECT and continuation medication to sustain remission.<ref>Kellner CH, Fink M, et al.: Continuation ECT versus pharmacotherapy for relapse prevention in major depression: a multi-site study from CORE. Archives General Psychiatry 2006; 63:1337-44</ref>
As professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurology at SUNY at Stony Brook and on the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the LIJ-Hillside Medical Center,<ref name="Acta"/> he spent much of his retirement writing; later books include ''Electroshock: restoring the mind'' (1999, Oxford University Press); with Jan-Otto Ottosson, ''Ethics in electroconvulsive therapy'' (2004, Brunner Routledge); with Michael Alan Taylor, ''Catatonia: A Clinician's Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment'' (2003, Cambridge University Press), and ''Melancholia: The Diagnosis, Pathophysiology, and Treatment of Depressive Illness'' (2006, Cambridge University Press), with Edward Shorter, ''Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia'' (2010, Oxford University Press) and ''The Madness of Fear: History of Catatonia'' (2018, Oxford University Press).
Fink funded<ref>[http://dfcm.utoronto.ca/research/pdf/grants.pdf DFCM Research Program - research grants July 2002 to June 2005] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070415151603/http://dfcm.utoronto.ca/research/pdf/grants.pdf |date=2007-04-15 }}.</ref> a book on the history of ECT by Edward Shorter and David Healy.<ref>E Shorter and D Healy 2007 ''Shock Therapy: a history of electroconvulsive treatment in mental illness.'' Rutgers University Press.</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==Archives== * SBU Library. Fink's archives from the 1950s to the present are at the [https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/libspecial/archives/collections/faculty/fink/index.php Special Collections and University Archives] of the Frank Melville Memorial Library of Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York.
==Further reading== ''Biographical Information''
* ''[https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/libspecial/archives/collections/faculty/fink/fink_70years_20210418.pdf 70 Years an Experimentalist in Neurology and Psychiatry]'' by Max Fink, M.D. April 18. 2021. Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University Libraries. *Max Fink faculty biography from the [https://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/psychiatry/faculty/fink_m/ Department of Psychiatry] at Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York.
''Interviews''
* Video: Cole, J.O. Interview with Max Fink. Dec 11, 1995. ''ACNP Historic Interviews''. * Interview with Max Fink. Dec 8, 2008. ''ACNP Historic Interviews''. In: TA Ban, D. Healy, E Shorter (Eds): ''From Psychopharmacology to Neuropsychopharmacology in the 1980s''. Budapest,:Animula Publishing, 1998: 151-156. * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_nCcUDl6is Video: Max Fink: Reflections on a Life and Career] (Interview of Dr. Max Fink about his life and career, conducted via Zoom by Dr. Sally Marlow and Dr. Paul Craddock in August 2023).
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Fink, Max}} Category:1923 births Category:2025 deaths Category:New York University alumni Category:Washington University in St. Louis faculty Category:American men centenarians Category:American psychiatrists Category:Austrian emigrants to the United States Category:American neurologists