Terry Lipton, 66; L.A. Psychiatrist Co-Founded a Help Line for Teens

Dr. Terry Lipton, a psychiatrist who co-founded Teen Line, a confidential phone help line staffed by trained teenage volunteers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, has died. He was 66.

Lipton, who refused to let post-polio syndrome keep him from pursuing a life of adventure in his spare time, died Saturday of colon cancer at his home in Westwood, said his wife, Judy.

Lipton was chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Young People, a nonprofit program affiliated with the department of psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which launched Teen Line in 1981.

“We know that when an adolescent is in trouble, the first person they turn to is not a parent, not a school counselor, not a clergy person, not a mental health professional. The first person they turn to is a peer,” Lipton said in a 1983 Los Angeles Times interview.

Since its founding, nearly 400,000 calls have been made to Teen Line, which operates daily from 6 to 10 p.m. Each evening, half a dozen “teen listeners” field an average of 20 to 25 calls dealing with everything from parental spats to suicidal depression.

The trained listeners, who are supervised by two volunteer mental health professionals, handle calls dealing with child abuse, running away from home, drug problems, depression, pregnancy, sexuality and other issues.

“About 20% of the callers are referred to agencies in their communities,” said Dr. Elaine Leader, co-founder and executive director of Teen Line, which also receives about 100 e-mails a week. It also offers a program in which outreach coordinators and teen volunteers give presentations to schools, youth groups and agencies that serve adolescents.

Leader said Lipton took great pride in Teen Line, a national model program, which operates on an annual budget of about $340,000 funded through individual donations, foundation and corporate grants and an annual fundraising luncheon.

After co-founding Teen Line, Lipton, who worked with both adolescents and adults in his private practice in Westwood, remained involved as a Teen Line consultant, particularly on clinical issues. He also participated in selecting teen volunteers and helping secure funding for the program.

“He was a very important sounding board for me,” Leader said. “Terry Lipton was a very wise, compassionate and committed psychiatrist, and he was in no way what one thinks of a stereotypical psychiatrist who’s kind of distant and sits back; he was very devoted to the welfare of his patients, and a most caring person, and very, very astute clinically.”

Born in Chicago, Lipton moved to Los Angeles his last year of high school. He graduated from UCLA in 1959. He received his medical and psychiatric training at County-USC Medical Center, graduating from the medical school in 1963.

Lipton, who was on the clinical faculty of UCLA School of Medicine and was an attending psychiatrist in the department of psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, also was on the board of directors of the Dubnoff Center for Child Development in North Hollywood.

But, his wife said, “he not only was a psychiatrist and educator, he was a true adventurer.”

Lipton contracted polio at age 4 and recovered enough to have only a slight limp as a young man.

But as he aged, his wife said, “he had terrible effects of post-polio” and walked with crutches for 25 years.

But that didn’t stop him from trekking on crutches to the base camp of Mt. Everest at more than 18,000 feet, in 1981.

Since then, he climbed Mt. Etna in Sicily, climbed pyramids in Mexico and pulled himself up a sheer cliff by rope to visit Buddhist caves above the Mekong River in Laos in 2000.

“He had a spirit of adventure and curiosity; nothing was going to stop him,” Judy Lipton said.

In addition to his wife of 38 years, Lipton is survived by his children, Megan and Noah; his father, Nathan; and his brother, Marty.