[Intuitive prognostic assessment in rehabilitation of long-term psychiatric patients]

The significance of intuitive prognostic assessments by the nursing staff and the examining female doctor is studied with regard to the course and results of "late rehabilitation" of 30 psychiatric patients who had been hospitalised for many years. Using standardised assessment criteria and catamnestic data on readmission as inpatients (covering a period of 20 months) patients were compared who had been discharged from the psychiatric hospital, transferred to long-term residential quarters, and assessed before discharge as likely or unlikely to be readmitted to the hospital. The group of patients who had been given an unfavourable prognosis--most of them women--proved in course of time to be readmitted as inpatients more often and to be significantly more disturbed than the patients who had been discharged with a more favourable prognosis. These results are discussed with regard to sociopolitical and medical care aspects and to approaches for further research in this direction.