printable versionHelp Center founder Kaplan dies at 87
BY LOUIS BERGERON
David Kaplan
David M. Kaplan, PhD, former head of the clinical social work division at the School of Medicine and founding director of what is now the Stanford Faculty and Staff Help Center, passed away June 1. He was 87.
Kaplan founded what was then called the Stanford Help Center in June 1977 to help faculty and staff cope with life's stresses. Then, as now, the center offered short-term, confidential counseling for problems such as job stress, relationship issues, parent-child concerns, alcohol and drug abuse, grief, loss and retirement issues. "Just about anything that can happen to a person," as a 1978 story in the Stanford Observer put it.
When Kaplan founded the center, it was an innovative program, said David Rasch, director of the center from 1992 to 2004. Rasch, currently the university ombudsman, said Stanford was one of the first universities to have such a program for faculty and staff and other schools used Stanford as a model. "The program was very successful," he said. "It's one of the strongest and best of its kind, even now."
The center began with two part-time therapists and initially served only the faculty and staff at the medical school. It eventually expanded to include the rest of the university, Stanford Hospital, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Menlo Medical Clinic and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. With a staff of 10 full- and part-time therapists, it now has satellite offices in San Jose, at the medical center and SLAC, in addition to the main campus office.
Kaplan served as director of the center for five years until his retirement in 1982. He was also head of the Division of Clinical Social Work in the Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine from 1967 until the division was eliminated and its services and staff absorbed into Stanford Hospital in 1981. From 1982 to 1985 he was professor emeritus in medicine.
Kaplan received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1961 and came to Stanford in 1967. As a researcher, he took particular interest in the impact of serious illness on the emotional well-being of a patient's family, as well as the patient. As a teacher, he developed classes in which medical students visited recovering patients and their families to gain a better appreciation of their experiences.
Kaplan is survived by his second wife, Barbara Taylor Kaplan, his daughter Deborah and his son Alexander. His first wife, Nadia, passed away in 1992.