Baltimore psychiatrist Dr. Frank J. Ayd Jr. who pioneered the field of psychopharmacology when he began treating schizophrenics with Thorazine in the early 1950s died from complications of coronary artery disease Monday at Lorien Mays Chapel Health Care Center at age 87.

Ayd became well known in May 1955 when he reported at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association on his use of two antipsychotic drugs, chlorpromazine, best known by the trade name Thorazine and reserpine. After getting the Food and Drug Administration’s permission to use Thorazine to treat schizophrenia, found that many of the 300 patients he treated with the drugs no longer needed hospitalization in a specialized setting and could be treated in a general hospital or nursing home. According to him, 80 percent were usefully employed.

His discovery had great economic implications, as it offered a way to cut the $1 billion the nation was then spending on mental illness.

“He was a biological psychiatrist, one of the important kinds of people who in spite of — and against — the establishment had the guts to stand up and really do things. Many people claim pioneering, but he really was. He entered the field when the whole thing started,” Thomas Ban, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt, told the Baltimore Sun.

Dr. Ayd’s inclination towards the medical field was long rooted in his family; he was the son of a pediatrician and grandson of a pharmacist. His thirst for medical knowledge began very early in his adolescence when delivering prescriptions by bicycle for his grandfather and organizing medical files in his father’s office.

In 1938, he graduated Loyola High School and earned his bachelor’s degree from Loyola College in 1942. He graduated the University of Maryland’ Medical School in 1945. In 1948, Dr. Ayd completed a two-year residency in psychiatry at Perry Point

Soon after his graduation, he registered his success in treating mentally ill patients with Thorazine.

“He understood that all drugs on some level are poisons. This wasn’t theoretical for him. This was about treating the patients with something that would help them,” Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo, chairman of the psychiatry department at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine said in an interview on Thursday, according to the New York Times.

Dr. Ayd helped start the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacology and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. In 1966, he established his own journal, the International Drug Therapy Newsletter that became Psychopharm Review last year.
He also contributed to more than 50 books and wrote over 400 articles. His “Ayd’s Lexicon of Psychiatry, Neurology and the Neurosciences” is a standard reference.

A Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 11 a.m. Monday at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, 13305 Long Green Pike, Hydes.

Dr. Ayd is survived by his wife of 64 years, five sons, six daughters, a brother, two sisters, 32 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren.