Donald Cohen, 61; Expert on Autism

Donald J. Cohen, director of Yale University’s renowned Child Study Center whose work deepened the understanding of such troubling disorders as Tourette’s syndrome and autism, died of cancer Oct. 2 in New Haven, Conn. He was 61.

Cohen, who was trained as a child and adult psychoanalyst, was known as a rigorous scientist and generous mentor who turned the Yale center into one of the world’s leading treatment and research facilities for disturbing afflictions of childhood.

He spearheaded a program in New Haven that has become a national model on how to assist children exposed to violence. His research on autism and Tourette’s syndrome--neurological disorders so poorly understood that parents were often blamed for their children having them--gave hope to thousands.

“Clearly, he did not blame parents for the problems their children had, but brought them into an alliance,” said Dr. Albert J. Solnit, a former director of the Yale Child Study Center who recruited Cohen to Yale.

Cohen offered soothing words to parents after the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, telling the New York Times, “You can blame a parent only until you’ve become a parent.”

At the same time, he was critical of the lack of resources for counseling children at psychological risk and for studying the causes of school violence.

“This country doesn’t think as much about its children and their future as it does about how to clean up streams,” he said.

He was the driving force behind the creation of the Yale Child Development-Community Policing Program, which has trained hundreds of police supervisors, line officers and juvenile probation officers throughout the country in ways to effectively intervene in the lives of children and families traumatized by violence.

His longtime interest in the role of aggression in child development gained new focus in the early 1990s, when he and others at Yale were being asked to grapple with the ways children were affected by television reports on the Persian Gulf War. At the same time, the New Haven area was experiencing a rash of violence involving children.

“That became an organizing concern for Donald,” said Steven Marans, a Yale professor of child psychoanalysis who directs the trauma programs for the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence there. “He created [a bridge] between mental health professionals and law enforcement. This was a pioneering step for some, but for Donald it was his metier. It was what he did.”

Marans called him “an extraordinary force for bringing seemingly unlikely partners together,” a quality he brought to bear in many international efforts.

He helped to develop programs in the Middle East that united Israeli and Palestinian mental health workers in an effort that focused on the psychological needs of war-ravaged children and families. He recently spurred a group of Arab and Israeli child psychiatrists to found the first child psychiatry journal in Arabic.

Tel Aviv University and the Tel Aviv Mental Health Center recently established the Cohen-Harris Center for the Study of Trauma in recognition of Cohen’s contributions.

Cohen also was a pioneer in the treatment of Tourette’s syndrome, the neurological disorder that causes involuntary motor and vocal tics. He accepted patients “when no one else was--when everyone else would have sent them to state hospitals,” Solnit said.

He made equally important contributions to understanding the roots of autism, a disorder often characterized by delayed speech development and other impediments. Working with colleagues, he found evidence that helped the medical field view it as a biological disorder.

“Parents were blamed for children having autism,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, a Yale professor who collaborated with Cohen on autism studies. “Donald was important in correcting that view; he showed that autism could be brain-centered. In fact, he said parents should be empowered to work on behalf of their [autistic] children.”

Cohen’s work led to the development of the drug clonidine, which is widely used to help autistic children control their restless behavior so that they can socialize with others and learn.

Colleagues said Cohen had an unusual gift for communicating with children, which was the foundation for his work.

“He was very attentive to children’s play, and would ask what it tells us about what is going on inside this child’s head right now,” Volkmar said. “He had no equal in this.”

Cohen had an easy rapport with parents, as well. His skill at interviewing was so legendary around Yale that he was once spoofed in a skit by medical students. In the skit, a mother told the Cohen character that her child has six heads. “And which one,” the doctor replied, “do you talk to the most?”

“He was unflappable,” Volkmar said. “There was an accepting atmosphere with Donald. As a result, people told him things. Donald could talk to anybody.”

Cohen was born in Chicago, the son of a businessman. He studied philosophy at Brandeis University, graduating in 1961, and continued his studies on a Fulbright scholarship at Cambridge University. He graduated from the Yale School of Medicine in 1966 and completed his training in pediatrics and general psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Boston’s Children’s Hospital.

He joined the Yale faculty in 1972 and became director of the Child Study Center in 1983.

He published more than 400 articles, chapters and books, including definitive texts on autism and Tourette’s syndrome.

Cohen is survived by his wife, Phyllis, who is also a psychoanalyst at the Yale Child Study Center; four children; five grandchildren; and his mother.