Henry Brill

Who was Henry Brill?

Henry Brill was an American psychiatrist and educator. A native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, he earned both his undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale University. After receiving his M.D. in 1932, he began a career in the New York state psychiatric system, culminating in the directorship of Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood, NY from 1958 to 1974. At its height in the mid-1950s, Pilgrim was the largest mental institution in the world, with a census of 13,875 patients. Brill also served as Deputy Commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene from 1959 to 1964.

Brill was a leader in the early use of the tranquilizer chlorpromazine in the United States for the treatment of psychosis, having heard of its success in France and Canada in the early 1950s. After being contacted directly by the drug's U.S. distributor, Smith Kline & French, Brill convened a meeting of New York psychiatrists in 1953 to discuss the benefits of chlorpromazine use in the public sector psychiatric hospital system. Shortly thereafter, New York became the first state to use the new medication in its hospitals on a large scale.