[Housing for psychiatric patients inside and outside of hospitals]

Abstract

The reform of psychiatric services started in Germany in 1975 with the publication of the governmental "Enquete"-Report. In the area of housing for chronic patients the recommendations made 1975 have not been fulfilled. A greater number of chronic patients as planned live in institutionalised homes with little access to the community and shortcomings in the area of individual self determination. The process of deinstitutionalization of the old chronic patients from psychiatric hospitals has created new problems. Some 60,000 patients have been deinstitutionalized, but in some parts of the country to a considerable degree just by renaming parts of the hospital into a home for the disabled. There is a need for research on who lives where and how and efforts have to be made to change this situation by the development of more community centered and individualised forms of living as shown by many successfully working regions in the country.