Fink was appointed research professor of psychiatry at Washington University in 1962, at New York Medical College in 1966 and professor of psychiatry and neurology at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1972. Early research included federal government-funded research into the changes in brain waves induced by electroshock, antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, opiates and narcotic antagonists, and cannabis and metabolites. For the past fifty years Fink's main interest has been in electroconvulsive therapy. Over the years his ideas on ECT have evolved from an early suggestion that the biochemical basis of ECT is similar to that of craniocerebral trauma through to statements that organic mental syndrome is seen in all patients following ECT but is usually transient and finally to the position that ECT-induced memory loss is a hysterical symptom with parallels to the Camelford water pollution incident. A specific interest compared ECT to seizures induced by flurothyl. A good part of his academic research was in the effects of psychoactive drugs on the electroencephalogram. His most recent interest is in the syndromes of catatonia and of melancholia. In 1985 Fink founded the journal Convulsive Therapy. He was a member of the American Psychiatric Association's task forces on ECT 1975-1978 and 1987-1990. Fink's awards include the Electroshock Research Association Award, the Laszlo Meduna Prize of the Hungarian National Institute for Nervous and Mental Disease, and Lifetime Achievement Awards of the Psychiatric Times and of the Society of Biological Psychiatry.
Retirement
In 1997 Fink moved to the Long Island Jewish Hillside Hospital to organize a government supported 4-hospital collaborative program examining continuation treatments in patients with major depression after successful ECT. The study group under the acronym "CORE"—Consortium on Research in ECT—has published on the merits of continuation ECT and continuation medication to sustain remission. He is professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurology at SUNY at Stony Brook and has been on the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the LIJ-Hillside Medical Center. He spends much of his time writing; recent books include Electroshock: restoring the mind ; with Jan-Otto Ottosson, Ethics in electroconvulsive therapy ; with Michael Alan Taylor, Catatonia: A Clinician's Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment, and Melancholia: The Diagnosis, Pathophysiology, and Treatment of Depressive Illness. Fink has funded a book on the history of ECT by Edward Shorter and David Healy.
