James Reardon- Social Aspects of Mental Health

Office Hours with John Gardner

Dr. James “Jim” Reardon is a retired psychiatrist who resides with his wife in New Zealand. He came to the attention of this podcast by being the first supervisor of podcast host, John Gardner, when both Gardner and Reardon were THE “Psychiatric Clinic” at Shaw Air Force Base, Sumter, South Carolina during the Vietnam War. Dr. Reardon was the Base psychiatrist and Gardner was his only psychiatric social worker. Together they provided mental health services for 8000 troops and 19,000 dependents during wartime. Jim is a perfect fit for this podcast because he was then an innovator right after finishing medical school, residency, and practice at a large California state mental hospital. Jim showed his impressionable and seven years younger subordinate how to do two things: 1) innovate in a profession where one successfully modified the status quo modality for “treatment” of patients for the kinds of challenges they were facing in the Air Force during war time; 2) innovate in a highly structured, disciplined and seeming inflexible military structure where to best serve troops some innovative approaches were greatly needed. While young John didn’t quite know it yet, his mentor, Jim Reardon, was teaching him a great deal about how to serve college students better and to enact change in a very traditional, centuries old structure. After the Air Force Jim went on to practice psychiatry for the next 50 years or so in both the United States and New Zealand. He and John continue to influence each other via Zoom on a regular basis. Jim hasn’t lost his mentor touch and John his openness to learn from other inspiring innovators.