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Dorothea Cross Leighton was a medical anthropologist known in particular for her research focused on the psychiatric health of Indigenous peoples in America, including the Navajo in New Mexico and the Inuit of Alaska. She was born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, on 2 September 1908, the second daughter of Dorothea Farquhar and Frederick Cushing Cross. Her siblings were Rosamond (b. 1907), Mary Farquhar (b.1910) and Frederick C, Jr. (1917-1943).
Dorothea received her undergraduate degree from Bryn Mawr College in 1930 and an MD from Johns Hopkins in 1936. She was married to Alexander H. Leighton from 1937-1965, with whom she had two children, Dorothea G. and Frederick A. They divorced in 1965.
From 1930-1932 Dorothea Leighton was a chemistry technician at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and from 1936-1937 she was a medicine intern at Baltimore City Hospitals. She remained there as house psychiatrist from 1937-1939 and, with Dr. Alexander H. Leighton, received the Joint Post-doctoral Research Training Fellowship at the Social Science Resource Council in 1939-1940. From 1941-1945 she was a Special Research Physician for the United States Indian Service, after which she was appointed Social Science Analyst for the United States Office of War Information. Her academic appointments included: Professor of Child Development and Family Relations at New York State School of Home Economics, Cornell University (1949-1952); Senior Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology (1952-1965); assistant, then associate professor at the Psychiatric Medical College (1954 -1965); Professor of Mental Health at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1965-1974), and department chair (1972-1974). Dr. Leighton was Professor Emeritus of Mental Health at Chapel Hill and at the Department of Epidemiology and Internal Health, University of California, San Francisco, from 1974 until her death in 1992.
Dorothea Leighton wrote two books: Character of Danger: Psychiatric Symptoms in Selected Communities (1963) and People of the Middle Place: A Study of the Zuni Indians (1966). With Alexander Leighton she co-wrote The Navajo Door: An Introduction to Navajo Life (1944); Gregorio The Handtrembler (1949); and Psychiatric Disorder Among the Yoruba (1963). In addition, she wrote two books with Clyde Kluckhohn.