Career
In her 2005 autobiography My Life So Far, Jane Fonda describes Neff"s work with Vietnam veterans, along with that of fellow psychiatrists Doctorates Robert Lifton, Shaim Shatan, and Sharah Haley, as "tireless and empathetic". In 1974 a 22-year-old Vietnam veteran named Johnny Gabron escaped from the Brentwood, California Veteran"s Administration hospital while having a flashback to his combat experiences in Viet Nam.
He took three people hostage at gunpoint in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, and subsequently demanded to speak to his psychiatrist, Doctor Neff.
Neff was flown in by helicopter (police blockades and news coverage caused the area of the city around the park to become gridlocked soon after incident began), and three hours later was able to end the armed standoff without incident. The issue brought to increasing public awareness the reality of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
