[A change of paradigms--an empowerment, a challenge for ambulatory psychiatry]

If one changes the paradigm--what should be changed, what has been changed? Even today, the number of beds at the department head's disposal represents power. Is power the purpose of psychiatry? Rather isn't the purpose the adequate treatment of a mentally impaired persons, about adequate support in a natural environment? In our society, and in particular in psychiatry, the striving for power must be questioned. Our memory of the deportation and the disappearance of mentally ill, of the extermination of "unworthy life", of Hartheim, Grafeneck and Brandenburg is still too fresh. It is imperative to convey the idea of a life worth living even then when this seems hopeless to us. Outpatient psychiatric care has bid farewell to outdated conventional structures, which in their time under certain social conditions had proven not to be unreasonable. Outpatient psychiatric care is about the rediscovery of a sense of life that gives reason for hope. Only the joint contemplation of new resources can bring us forward.