David Sturgeon obituary

My friend and former colleague David Sturgeon, who has died aged 76, was for many years a lecturer in psychiatry at Middlesex hospital in central London, where he encouraged generations of medical students to introduce a psychotherapeutic approach when dealing with patients.

He was known for his great empathy and understanding. In later years he moved away from his focus on the academic side of his career to become a full-time consultant psychiatrist at University College hospital (UCH) in London, where he helped survivors of the King’s Cross fire of 1987, the Admiral Duncan pub bombing in 1999 and the 7 July 2005 bombings in London.

Later he switched back into the academic world, this time as a consultant heading UCL’s student psychological and counselling services, where he had a pivotal role in providing therapeutic support.

David was born in Northenden, Greater Manchester, to Alex, an RAF officer, and Jean, a housewife. Owing to his father’s work he had a peripatetic childhood and was educated first at Stamford school in Lincolnshire and then Hipperholme grammar school in Halifax, West Yorkshire. He pursued his medical education at St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he developed interests in music, drama, and mime.

In 1971 he moved to UCH to train as a psychiatrist, before becoming a lecturer at Middlesex hospital in 1975 and a senior lecturer there in 1977. He switched to be a consultant psychiatrist at UCH in 1985 and joined its student psychological and counselling team in 2006.

Over the years, David had a profound impact on the lives of many people, including the journalist and broadcaster Alastair Campbell, a patient for 20 years, who often spoke of his gratitude and dedicated two books to him. Colleagues, as well as patients, relished his refusal to bow to pieties; he liked saying the unsayable, and enjoyed the reaction.

David met Liz Lederman through mutual friends in Hampstead, north London, and they married in 1975. Their home in Kentish Town, north-west London, provided a centre of social life for all generations, as did their mill cottage on the Yorkshire moors, where, just as he was embarking on his retirement, he suffered a catastrophic fall in July last year.

He faced his subsequent paralysis with a characteristically mordant wit and patience. He never lost his wicked sense of humour, nor his deadpan delivery. He was endowed with a generous appreciation of human foibles, and a deeply felt knowledge of what mattered in life and what you had to learn from it.

He is survived by Liz, their two daughters, Kate and Natasha, and three grandchildren, Iris, Zac and Theo.