14 Facts About Joan Bicknell

Joan Bicknell was Britain's first female psychiatry professor.

Joan Bicknell worked at St George's, University of London and pioneered the area of learning disability.

Joan Bicknell confronted cruelty at psychiatric hospitals and was a human rights advocate of institutionalized people with intellectual disabilities, unpopular with and never accepted by the medical establishment.

Joan Bicknell was born into a working-class family in Isleworth, London.

Joan Bicknell had an older brother, Edward, who died as a teacher in Swaziland.

Joan Bicknell returned to the UK to study psychiatry at Queen Mary's Hospital, in Carshalton, a hospital for long-term care of children in Surrey.

Joan Bicknell became a consultant psychiatrist at Botleys Park Hospital in Chertsey, Surrey.

Joan Bicknell introduced managing a hospital through a multidisciplinary team rather than, as was then customary, a Medical Superintendent.

Joan Bicknell concentrated on humanising care of people with intellectual disabilities.

Joan Bicknell took a position in bioethical hot spots years before others like the sterilization of minors with developmental disabilities in 1988, compared to the American Academy of Pediatrics for example in 1990.

Joan Bicknell's approach challenged the expectation that people were better not cared for in their own homes and meant that Bicknell was never part of the medical establishment.

Joan Bicknell had asthma and other health problems, eventually mental illness.

Joan Bicknell moved to Dorset county with her partner Diana Worsley, owning a farm for children with disabilities to have contact with animals.

Joan Bicknell died of cancer in Stalbridge in Dorset county.