Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based at the Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage in London, England. It specialises in talking therapies and operates an out-patient clinic model, keeping people in the community in the support networks of their families, friends and workplaces. It runs 33 mental health services and one specialist school. The Trust also provides professional training and postgraduate studies. The education and training department runs over 100 courses and caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust's third strand of activity is research and publishes widely on its own imprint as well as scientific and medical journals.

It was originally founded as the Tavistock Clinic on 27 September 1920 by Hugh Crichton-Miller. Its original premises were at 51 Tavistock Square, which is where it took its name from. When it was founded it had two departments adult and children. Teaching and lecturing to other professional audiences also began almost as soon as the clinic opened.

By the end of the 1920s the Tavistock Clinic needed to expand and so incorporated as a charity: The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in 1929. Initially this was to raise money for an extension, but by 1932 it had outgrown its premises in Bloomsbury. The Tavistock Clinic obtained a lease for a disused mews on corner of Torrington Place and Malet Place by University College. This allowed for specialised clinical rooms with one way mirrors as well as a lecture theatre that allowed the Clinic to develop an educational offering. In 1932, thanks to JA Hadfield, that the Tavistock Clinic first got university recognition for its Diploma in Psychological Medicine from the University of London. Being a charity meant that the Clinic could also apply for grants and in 1936 it won its first research fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation - ATM Wilson studied the peptic ulcer in its psychological and social aspects.

During World War 2 the Tavistock Clinic relocated to a temporary site in Hampstead after its central London sites were destroyed in the Blitz. Many of the staff took positions in the military, the then Director, J R Rees, was appointed consultant psychiatrist to the Army at Home and made responsible for the mental health of approximately three million people.

After the war the Tavistock Clinic joined the NHS as a founding organisation in 1948, with its staff being the first to be paid by the new NHS from April 1948.

The immediate era after the war was a period of huge growth and innovation for the Tavistock Clinic. Wilfred Bion took charge of Clinic and prepared it to join the NHS. He established the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) in 1948, which embodied a multi-disciplinary and integrative approach to the behavioural sciences. As this new organisation could not join the NHS with the Clinic, it was incorporated as a separate company. In 1948, Enid Balint founded the Family Discussion Bureau with Lily Pincus and Alison Lyons (later renamed the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute and now known as Tavistock Relationships which still operates under the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology).

Most importantly John Bowlby joined the Tavistock Clinic after World War 2 and took charge of the Children's Department. If Crichton-Miller planted the seed of talking therapies, it was John Bowlby who provided the scientific framework. It was at the Tavistock Clinic, that he began the work that would transform our understanding of human development: Attachment Theory, which explains how bonds between infants and caregivers shape everything that follows – it now underpins virtually every form of contemporary psychotherapy. By this measure, Bowlby is the most influential psychoanalyst of all time.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust was formed in 1994, when the Tavistock Clinic merged with the neighbouring Portman Clinic in Fitzjohns Avenue. The Portman specialises in areas of forensic psychiatry, including the treatment of addictive, sociopathic and criminal behaviours and tendencies.

It successfully became the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in 2006, one of the first mental health trusts to do so.

On 9 April 2025, it was announced that the Trust would merge with the newly formed North London NHS Foundation Trust by April 2026, forming one of the largest community and mental health trusts in London.