Pictured above (L to R): Dean David Kessler,
Royer Award recipients John Sikorski and Renee' Binder,
Psychiatry Chair Craig Van Dyke

When J. Elliott Royer drafted his will in 1952, he believed that his investments would yield significant results, but it seems likely that neither he nor his attorneys could have imagined that shares of stock in such companies as Standard Oil, General Motors, AT&T and Bank of America would grow to fund one of the largest prizes in the fields of psychiatry and neurology.

Each year, two Bay area individuals receive the Royer Award for their contributions to the fields of psychiatry or neurology, one each in academic and community practice. This year's awards amount to more than $23,000 for each recipient. All terms of the award, including the selection criteria and the method of calculating the award amounts, were set out with specific instructions that Royer included in his will.

Recipients this year are Renée Binder, MD, and John Sikorski, MD. The awards were formally presented at an event organized by the Department of Psychiatry on September 29.

Binder, a longtime faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry who currently serves as an associate dean for academic affairs for the UCSF School of Medicine, is recognized internationally for her work in violence prediction, forensic psychiatry and organized psychiatry. Her research focuses on violence risk assessment of mentally ill patients, the relationship between mental illness and violence, and the criminalization of the mentally ill.

At UCSF, Binder has taken leadership roles in a career that has spanned directing the Adult Inpatient Service at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute to creating and directing the Psychiatry and the Law Program. Binder's numerous contributions to the University also encompass faculty and student welfare and the status of women. In addition, Binder has served both as president of the Northern California Psychiatric Society and the California Psychiatric Association, and nationally as chair of the American Psychiatric Association Council on Psychiatry and the Law and president of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Sikorski, a clinical professor of psychiatry, is being recognized for his dedicated service to society and his support for the rights of the children he treats. For four decades, he has championed innovative community-based programs, and has trained and encouraged a large number of child psychiatrists. Sikorski most recently served on the San Francisco Behavioral Health Task Force, and helped guide planning for funding services through the Mental Health Services Act for children and families with serious emotional disturbances.

He has been the chair of the Psychiatric Services Committee of the San Francisco Medical Society for nearly two decades, and he is an internationally sought-after lecturer.

In addition to endowing the Royer Awards, Royer also provided a substantial endowment for First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, which has been called the "mother of churches" in Oakland because of its history dating back to 1853.

"The interest income of the endowment has maintained Dr. Royer's financial commitment to the church for more than 20 years beyond his death," said Rev. Chandler B. Stokes. "Most recently, those funds have been part of how we have restored the associate pastor position—a position in education, which was his primary concern."

Although Royer's legacy is strong, there is relatively little information about the man or what personal goals he had for these endowments. He was a neurologist, graduating from Johns Hopkins in 1907 and eventually settling in Kansas City, where he was in private practice. In 1925, he moved to Oakland, where he was active until he retired in 1949. In addition to his private practice, he was neurologist at Providence Hospital. He died in 1961.