My father, Ewart Hood, who has died aged 71, was an NHS psychologist and a kind and quietly brilliant man.
The son of the Rev John Hood, a Church of Scotland minister, and his wife, Peggy (nee Ewart), he was born in Edinburgh and brought up in Perthshire with his brother, Allan. He attended Morrison’s academy in Crieff before studying psychology at Edinburgh University, graduating in 1971. He qualified as a clinical psychologist at the University of Birmingham in 1973.
He went on to practise first at Stanley Royd hospital, in Wakefield, where he met his future wife, Denise Robinson, another psychologist. They married in 1979.
Ewart was an early advocate of supporting people with mental health problems to live in the community, rather than in institutions. He was never afraid to speak up against injustice - including blowing the whistle about poor practice he witnessed early in his career. In 1978 he moved to Llanederyn health centre, Cardiff, to be senior clinical psychologist in a new practice and one of the first of its kind, based within the general practice department of Cardiff University Medical School.
In the 1980s Ewart and Denise, now with two children, moved to Newcastle where Ewart worked part time while caring for us, and my mother went back to work full-time.
He worked at St Nicholas (psychiatric) hospital, then as a senior clinical psychologist at the Newcastle district psychology department, working with outpatients from and within GP practices in the west end of Newcastle. Later he became a consultant clinical psychologist at Freeman hospital, Newcastle.
He disliked formal teaching but was a popular supervisor on the Newcastle doctorate course for clinical psychology from 1990 to 2004. He was never too busy to take on a trainee.
His clients in Newcastle included refugees from conflict in Rwanda and the Congo. When they were too afraid to use an interpreter, he would switch into French.
Ewart loved music. As a young child, he learned to play the church organ, sometimes standing in for the organist at Sunday services. As an adult, he played the piano and guitar and sang in the university choir, the Newcastle Anti-Apartheid choir and later the North East Socialist Singers.
Ewart retired in 2004. He learned to upholster and to bake bread, as well as taking long-distance cycling trips, tending an allotment and supporting his family.
He is survived by Denise and by his children, Peter and me, and by three grandchildren, Elsa, Naomi and Bill, and Allan.
