Events

• World Mental Health Day.

People (Deaths)

• 1979 – Christopher Evans, English psychologist, computer scientist, and author (b. 1931).

Christopher Evans

Christopher Riche Evans (29 May 1931 to 10 October 1979) was a British psychologist, computer scientist, and author.

He spent two years in the RAF (1950-1952), and worked as a science journalist and writer until 1957, when he began a B.A. course in Psychology at University College, London, graduating with honours in 1960. After a summer fellowship at Duke University in the United States, where he first met his American wife, Nancy Fullmer, he took up a Research Assistant post in the Physics Laboratory, University of Reading, working on eye movements under Professor R.W. Ditchburn. Upon receiving his PhD (the title of his thesis was “Pattern Perception and the Stabilised Retinal Image”), he went to the Division of Computer Science, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, in 1964, where he remained until his death from cancer in 1979.

World Mental Health Day

World Mental Health Day is an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma. It was first celebrated in 1992 at the initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health, a global mental health organisation with members and contacts in more than 150 countries. This day, each October, thousands of supporters come to celebrate this annual awareness programme to bring attention to mental illness and its major effects on peoples’ lives worldwide. In some countries this day is part of an awareness week, such as Mental Health Week in Australia.