Ewald Hecker

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Ewald Hecker (October 20, 1843 - 1909) was a German psychiatrist who was an important figure in the early days of psychiatry. He is known for research done with his mentor, psychiatrist Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum.

In the early 1870s Kahlbaum and Hecker did a series of studies on young psychotic patients at Kahlbaum's clinic in Gorlitz, Prussia. Together they provided clinical analyses of the mentally ill, and arranged their disorders into specific, descriptive categories. It was during this period that Hecker came up with the descriptive terms of hebephrenia and cyclothymia. He described hebephrenia as a disorder that begins in adolescence with erratic behaviour followed by a rapid decline of all mental functions, and cyclothymia as a cyclical mood disorder.

Their pioneer research was a major influence on Emil Kraepelin’s dichotomy between dementia praecox and manic depressive insanity, and also on our modern concepts of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Hecker had progressive ideas concerning treatment of the mentally ill, and was an advocate in establishing a humane environment for mental patients. In 1891 he purchased a private psychiatric hospital in Wiesbaden.

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