My husband, Michael Göpfert, who has died of cancer aged 77, was a consultant psychotherapist and child psychiatrist in Merseyside. In 1985 he set up a new psychotherapy service at the Royal Liverpool hospital, with integration at its heart, ensuring that therapists from different disciplines each had some training in another therapeutic method.
Michael saw that separating adult and child services when a parent had a severe mental illness meant that the effect on the children was often missed. He was an early proponent of this neglected area and edited the book Parental Psychiatric Disorder (1996). He worked closely with Barnardo’s Young Carers and its Keeping the Family in Mind service in Liverpool, now well established but innovative when it began. Michael also trained medical students in communication skills, supervised many psychiatric trainees and brought cognitive analytic therapy training to Merseyside. He was always prepared to take on difficult issues that others avoided.
