COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRY - CURRENT PRACTICE AND FUTURE-DEVELOPMENT

Psychiatric care has undergone further changes in recent years, with day hospitals and complementary services and facilities paving the way for community psychiatry. Increasing importance is attached to patients and their families: they have become partners in the therapeutic process and - viewed pragmatically - clients for offers of psychiatric therapy. They thus play a crucial role in the further development of psychiatry. Further reductions in inpatient capacities are to be expected in the near future. This will necessitate setting up regional structures permitting planning and coordination in a complex sociopolitical and psychiatric environment.