Dr. Milton Miller, 77; Champion of Public Mental Health Services

Dr. Milton H. Miller, a former chairman of the psychiatry department at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and a longtime champion of mental health care for poor and minority communities, has died. He was 77.

Miller died Wednesday at his home in San Pedro following a long illness, according to UCLA, where he was professor emeritus of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine.

Also, until his death, Miller was deputy medical director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, a position he held for 27 years.

“Dr. Miller had a lifelong vision that mental health services must be available for public patients, and that these services need to be supported by the academic resources of the university,” said Dr. Peter Whybrow, director of the University of California’s Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles.

Born Sept. 1, 1927, in Indianapolis, Miller had earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees at Indiana University by the time he was 23. In 1953, he completed a medical residency in psychiatry at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan.

After serving in the Air Force for two years, he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin and within six years was chairman of its psychiatry department. In 1978, he became chairman of the psychiatry department at Harbor-UCLA near Torrance, a post he held until last fall, and deputy medical director of the county Department of Mental Health.

“He was truly inspirational for generations of mental health clinicians,” said Dr. Ira Lesser, chairman of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA.

But Miller had his moments of despair. In 1989, when the closure of three county mental health centers left services only for what he called “the sickest of the sickest of the sick,” he described the crisis as “the saddest, the most cruel, the most desperate” period in mental health he had seen in his career.

“We play a game of ‘Sophie’s Choice’ night after night after night,” he told The Times, referring to the Harbor-UCLA clinic, which escaped the closures. “It’s a horrible job.”

Miller was the author of “Psychiatry, A Personal View” (1982).

He is survived by his wife, Harriet; two sons, Bruce and Jeffrey; a daughter, Marcie; and nine grandchildren.

A memorial fund in Miller’s name has been established at the Los Angeles Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, Box 8, 1000 W. Carson St., Torrance, CA 90509.