Dr. Seymour Kety; Revolutionized Mental Health Study

Dr. Seymour S. Kety, a biological psychiatrist whose studies of the human brain revolutionized the understanding of major mental illnesses, has died.

Kety, 84, died Thursday at his home in Westwood, Mass.

He emphasized the biological basis of mental illness in the 1950s, a time when psychoanalysis dominated most academic psychiatry departments. His work was the first to provide evidence that schizophrenia ran in families, helping to overturn the widely held belief that it was primarily caused by bad parenting.

In the 1940s and early ‘50s, Kety discovered the first quantitative technique for measuring blood flow in the living brain, a technique that made possible later technologies such as PET scanning.

Last year the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation presented Kety with its Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science, recognizing his work on blood flow and schizophrenia.

Born in Philadelphia, Kety graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his M.D. there several years later.

He was an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the Harvard Medical School, having retired in 1983 after 15 years. Until 1997 he was senior psychobiologist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

He is survived by his wife, Dr. Josephine Gross Kety; a son, Lawrence; a daughter, Roberta; and two grandchildren.