My friend Paul Wolfson, who has taken his own life aged 61, was a man of many parts. While studying medicine at Cambridge in the early 1970s, he become involved with Footlights where, with his co-writer Steve Thorne, he wrote and starred in two successful revues, which played at the Edinburgh festival and the Roundhouse in London.
After graduation, their writing partnership took them into film, television and theatre, but when Paul became a father seven years later, he returned to medicine as his day job. He chose psychiatry and trained at the Royal London and Guy's hospitals, rising swiftly to become consultant in rehabilitation at Bexley hospital.
He was Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust's first head of clinical audit and served as a member and vice-chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' faculty of rehabilitation and social psychiatry. Renowned for his collaborative style, he had a firm belief in the dignity of the patient, whatever the challenges of treatment.
He was born in Birmingham, the second of three brothers. His father was a dentist who loved amateur dramatics. His mother loved writing poetry. Paul went to Solihull school and spent his early teens at Habonim camps (run by the Jewish Labour Zionist youth movement), which he said was a great way to meet girls.
Blessed with a dry sense of humour and natural kindness, Paul faced all situations, including the diagnosis of Huntington's disease given for his first wife, Shelagh, with stoicism and energy. His work was eventful and full – he once described to me how a patient arrived at the hospital with a gun and he had to talk him down – and Paul stayed involved after retirement. He produced a video showing the experience of mental health services from the patient's point of view, with former patients as his actors.
Early in 2012, Paul was diagnosed with a rare and fast-moving form of dementia, which would have eroded his ability to read or speak and would have rendered those dearest to him as strangers. He decided not to allow such a fate to affect his family. His warmth and intelligence remained intact until the end: he kept his wit even when struggling for the right words with which to deliver it.
His second marriage, in 2006, to Lore Windemuth was extremely happy, resulting in two children, Elena and Richard. They all survive him, along with his children Joe and Eliza from his first marriage.