On 6 March 1987, the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry set sail from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge heading for Dover. The bow doors were not shut and within seconds it flooded with seawater. It capsized and 193 passengers and crew died.
Bill (William) Yule, who has died aged 83, was a child psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry (now the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience) in London and head of clinical psychology at what was then the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley hospital. He was asked to help the surviving children and speaking about it he said: “It totally changed my career and my life. I’d never come across such raw emotion.”
While it was accepted in the 1980s that disasters could traumatise adults, children were thought to be very resilient and able to come through unscathed. Yule’s work, however, changed that consensus, and it is accepted now that children can develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and it needs treatment: the memories are not something they can just “grow out of”. In fact, Yule liked to quote a colleague who said: “The only thing children do grow out of is their clothes.”
Yule went on to treat children from a string of disasters, including the King’s Cross tube fire in 1987 and the sinking of the Jupiter cruise ship off Athens and the Marchioness riverboat on the Thames in 1988 and 1989, and was able to follow them up long term, gathering valuable data. He also became an expert witness, representing families at inquests.
It was emotionally draining work at times and, considerate of others’ feelings, Yule started typing up his own notes about the children when he realised how distressing it was for the secretaries doing this work.
In 1993 Unicef commissioned Yule to set up a mental health service in Mostar for children affected by the war in Bosnia. In a conflict situation, one-to-one therapy is not feasible, so Yule set up workshops to train school teachers in psychological techniques they could use with children.
His methods were always grounded in rigorous science and he became exasperated at times when well-meaning charity workers rushed to help children in war zones, with little knowledge of how to evaluate them or what might be harmful.
To bring the best evidence-based psychological help to children caught up in disasters, in 2000 Yule and the Norwegian psychologist Atle Dyregrov founded the Children and War Foundation. They wrote five training manuals, including Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT), for teachers, parents and others to use with groups of children affected by flashbacks, nightmares and other symptoms.
The manuals include “a toolbox” of visualisation and other exercises, such as imagining that the frightening sound a child might be hearing inside their head (for example screaming) is coming from an outside source, such as a radio, and that it is possible to dial down the volume.
Yule retired aged 65 but continued to share his expertise widely, as the foundation’s programmes were in demand all over the world. He had set up a trauma group in Sri Lanka to help children affected by the civil war and then the tsunami in 2004. He went to Iran after the 2003 earthquake in Bam, and in the 2014 Ukraine crisis he ran workshops in Lviv for mental health professionals. The Ukrainian ministry of science and education now recommends TRT in schools and they have helped thousands of Ukrainian children with war-related trauma.
In 2005 the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies awarded Yule a lifetime achievement award, and the following year the British Psychological Society gave him an honorary fellowship, denoting particular merit.
William was born in Aberdeen. His father, Peter, was a licensed grocer and his mother, Mary (nee Moir), a mental health nurse. His younger sister Myrtle had learning difficulties and other psychological problems, which gave William insights into mental health issues from a young age.
From Aberdeen grammar school William went to the University of Aberdeen to study maths. He fully intended to become a maths teacher, but became more interested in his subsidiary subject, psychology, and switched in the second year.
In 1962 he graduated in psychology and moved to London to do a one-year diploma in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry. He worked with the leading child psychologist Jack Tizard and the first professor of child psychiatry, Michael Rutter, joining a team led by Rutter on the groundbreaking Isle of Wight studies, the first to look at the prevalence of educational and psychological difficulties in children aged nine to 11.
Yule was the lead psychologist for some sections on educational attainment and reading difficulties, and reading problems became the subject of his PhD. Later, when Tizard was very ill in 1979, Yule asked what he might do to help. “FYT!” came the response (Finish your thesis!), which Yule duly did the same year.
After five years under Tizard at the Institute of Education, University of London, as lecturer in child development, Yule returned in 1969 to the Institute of Psychiatry in London and in 1987 became professor of applied child psychology there. His interests were wide and his output prodigious: as well as his work on trauma, he wrote widely on subjects such as phobias, autism, behavioural issues, language development, and fostering and adoption. His research into the effect of lead in petrol on children’s brains contributed to its banning.
He was also hugely instrumental in raising the profile of clinical psychology as a discipline and he set up several bodies, including the crisis, disaster and trauma section of the British Psychological Society in 2013 and a national programme called “Fostering Changes” to support foster carers.
In 1967 Yule married Vivien Walters; they separated in 1969. He knew Bridget Osborn, a researcher, through his work at the Institute of Psychiatry and they married in 1972. They made their home in Camberwell, south London and had two children: Claire in 1975 and Alastair in 1978.
A gentle, softly spoken man, Yule entered into local life with relish, participating in the regular pantomimes put on by local residents. He was once an “ugly sister” with Terry Jones from Monty Python, sporting a ballgown previously worn by John Cleese. To find respite from his work, he liked to carry a box of watercolours wherever he went and paint landscapes. He also liked to read thrillers and enjoyed tending his garden, which much to his delight appeared in a book by Ben Dark – The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19½ Front Gardens (2022).
He is survived by Bridget, Claire and Alastair, and his grandchildren Jayden, Annaisia and Cooper.
• William Yule, psychologist, born 20 June 1940; died 5 November 2023
