S. F. YOLLES, 81, NATION'S TOP MENTAL HEALTH OFFICIAL IN 60'S

Dr. Stanley F. Yolles, who as the nation's top official on mental health in
the 1960's denounced what he saw as "stupid, punitive laws" on drug use and
was eventually forced out by the Nixon administration, died on Jan. 12 at
University Hospital in Stony Brook, N.Y. He was 81 and lived in Stony Brook.

The cause was emphysema, his family said.

Dr. Yolles was director of the National Institute of Mental Health from
1964 to 1970 and as such oversaw, among other things, research on illicit
drugs and efforts to treat addicts. He was a prominent voice in the
national debate over how to deal with the soaring use of marijuana and
other drugs by young people.

In testimony before House and Senate committees, Dr. Yolles argued that
strict laws failed as deterrents, and advocated abolishing mandatory
sentences and giving judges greater leeway in dealing with drug users,
especially first-time offenders. Of penalties for marijuana possession, he
said, "I know of no clearer instance in which the punishment for an
infraction of the law is more harmful than the crime."

His testimony was said to have helped persuade the Justice Department to
reduce penalties for marijuana, and it also angered the Nixon
administration, with which he had also battled over spending and the
direction of the institute. On June 2, 1970, the administration announced
that Dr. Yolles had been dismissed, the same day that he issued a letter of
resignation accusing the White House of "abandonment of the mentally ill."

Dr. Yolles's daughter Melanie said her father "tried to work with the
administration, but it got to a point where they were totally opposed in
their ideologies." Hearing that he was about to be fired, she said, "he
decided to issue his own pre-emptive strike by resigning."

Stanley Fausst Yolles (pronounced YOH-less) was born on April 19, 1919, in
New York City. His father, Louis, owned a dress factory, and his mother,
Rose, was a milliner. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology at Brooklyn
College, where he met his future wife, Tamarath Knigin, and he received a
master's in parasitology at Harvard. During World War II, the Yolleses
worked for the Army Corps of Engineers in the Caribbean, specializing in
the prevention of insect-borne diseases.

But Stanley Yolles decided that the most important work to be done in
public health was not in infectious diseases, but in psychiatry.

"I could no longer be satisfied with a one-to-one relationship with a
microscope," he said, and he returned to school, earning a medical degree
from New York University in 1950.

His residency was at the Public Health Service hospital in Lexington, Ky.,
where drug addicts were treated. His experience at the hospital, where
patients were shackled and handcuffed and the recidivism rate was high,
left him determined to remake the system with an emphasis on rehabilitation.

He joined the mental health institute in the early 1950's, and rapidly rose
through its ranks. When he became its second director in 1964, he had as
his main goal the opening of community mental health centers so fewer
patients would be forced into large mental institutions, and he said that
the institute had helped establish at least 200 by 1970.

Dr. Yolles "envisioned that just as everyone lives in a school district,
everyone in the United States would live in a defined community that was
responsible to provide mental health service," said Dr. Alan D. Miller, who
worked with Dr. Yolles at the institute and was later the commissioner of
the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene.

Dr. Yolles also led the first official delegation, in 1967, to study mental
health in the Soviet Union.

He also did away with the bars and handcuffs at the Lexington hospital. But
it was his stances in the drug debate that made headlines, with Dr. Yolles
saying shortly before his ouster, "I felt I had to speak out against
stupid, punitive laws."

After he left the government, Dr. Yolles created the department of
psychiatry at the State University of New York School of Medicine at Stony
Brook in 1971. He was the department chairman until 1981, and became
professor emeritus the next year. He was also the director of the Long
Island Research Institute, which conducted mental health studies, from 1974
to 1981.

His wife, who became an associate dean at the Stony Brook medical school,
died in 1985. In addition to his daughter Melanie A. Yolles, of Manhattan,
he is survived by another daughter, Dr. Jennifer C. Yolles of Syracuse, and
three grandchildren.