Nadine Lambert, 79; UC Scholar Was Leader in School Mental Health Efforts

Nadine Lambert, a professor emerita in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley who was recognized as a leader in school psychology and establishing mental health programs in schools, has died. She was 79.

Lambert died April 26 in a car accident near campus, school officials said.

In 1964, her first year at the university, Lambert founded the School Psychology Program at the education school. The program, which she headed for 40 years, received support from the National Institute of Mental Health for 18 years as a model for preparing professional psychologists.

Early in her career, Lambert was part of a team of investigators for the California Department of Education assigned to establish and evaluate programs for children with educational handicaps, including those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

The team’s work resulted in legislation supporting educational programs for children with learning and behavioral disorders.

At UC Berkeley in the late 1960s, Lambert began a 30-year study of 492 children – about half of whom had ADHD – that recorded life histories of the participants from kindergarten into early adulthood.

Lambert, who documented the prevalence of hyperactivity and the various treatments for it, presented her study at a National Institutes of Health meeting in 1998.

In the study, which created a stir, she found that the children who were treated with stimulant drugs such as Ritalin to control ADHD started smoking cigarettes earlier, smoked more heavily and were more likely as adults to abuse cocaine and other stimulants than those not taking such medications.

The findings, Lambert said at the time, raised serious questions about the risks associated with Ritalin and similar drugs.

Lambert’s study reportedly was not widely embraced among ADHD researchers.

Some said her results could be skewed because in the years of the study only children with severe behavior disorders were put on medication. Other experts argued that the novelty-seeking personalities of children with ADHD – not Ritalin – were what led them to experiment with street drugs.

After retiring in 1994, Lambert served as a professor emerita of education and an advisor and mentor in the Graduate School of Education’s joint doctoral program in education leadership.

A native of Ephraim, Utah, Lambert grew up in West Hollywood.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA in 1948, a master’s in education from Cal State Los Angeles in 1955 and a doctorate in psychology from USC in 1965.

Lambert, whose husband, Robert, died in 1984, is survived by her children, Jeffrey Lambert and Laura Allan.