The life scientific : 1/8 [Michael Rutter].

Part of a series of programmes in which Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work. This part features Sir Michael Rutter, leading psychiatric researcher and child psychiatrist. Among many accomplishments, he helped to establish the genetic basis for autism, and undertook ground-breaking work in the area of mental illness in the community. Mike Rutter is still working at 81 and Jim Al-Khalili asks him about this. He talks about being a practising consultant with regard to the research he does with adoptees from Romania, and also his post as Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. They refer to his early years in the 1940s and his faith as a Quaker, and how these have informed him. He mentions what got him interested in psychiatry after he had qualified as a doctor, including his time at the Maudsley Hospital in South London in the Social Psychiatry Unit headed by Sir Aubrey Lewis. Jim Al-Khalili asks him how he felt at the time about his early career path in child psychiatry. Philip Graham, Emeritus Professor of Child Psychiatry at Great Ormond Street Hospital, who trained with him, speaks about the way Rutter provided the foundations for the scientific study of child psychiatry. They return to considering Rutter's influence in the field of child autism and how he viewed autism differently to the way it was considered at the time. They talk about his landmark work in epidemiological studies, particularly a school study he undertook, and his pioneering work in interviewing children directly. He talks about the differences in the 1970s between child psychiatry and psychoanalysis. He was critical because decisions were made based on theory and not on evidence. He speaks about why he challenged John Bowlby's mother-child attachment theory. Much of Rutter's work has been about how children deal with adversity and develop resilience which is discussed, during which Professor Ann Masten, University of Minnesota, speaks briefly about Rutter's work in psychological resilience. They then talk about some landmark longitudinal studies he set up with regard to orphans in Romania from 1990. Sharon Witherspoon, Director of the Nuffield Foundation, which part funds the English Romanian Adoptees Study, considers Rutter's work. He then talks about the studies and about the participants involved. For him clinical work and research are intertwined. They finish by talking about changes over time in the care of children.