Dane Gaskill Prugh (3 June 1918 – 6 October 1990)[1] was a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, whose work demonstrated the necessity for wider knowledge, understanding, and experience in the evaluation of such programs.
[2] Prugh practiced psychiatry at the Medical Center in Brookline, then ran the inpatient unit in Rochester, New York for several years.
[citation needed] For one year, from 1968 to 1969, Prugh served as President of the American Orthopsychiatric Association.
Related studies have shown that children who have the support of family members during prolonged hospitalizations are less likely to develop subsequent learning problems and delinquency.
Prugh argued that the problem with much child psychiatry was not necessarily the ineffectiveness of treatment, but the inability to maintain care for the children after they returned to the community, and the consequent reversal of gains in mental health made during treatment when they became chronically hospitalized.