[Changes in the provision of psychiatric services at a psychiatric district hospital]

Changes in the provision of psychiatric services within the last decennials are probably best understood if the impact of national socialism on clinical psychiatry is regarded. Many psychiatrists took part in the "Aktion T4" the organised killing of their patients, at least they did not resist campaigns directed to killing or sterilisation patients. After WW II, a period of silence and acceptance of inhuman circumstances in the large mental state hospitals appeared, when in the sixties a new generation of psychiatrists was no longer willing to continue the traditional system of mental health care delivery. The Expert Commission on Mental Health Care reported a comprehensive agenda on reformation of service delivery in 1975, which was influential in the development of alternative structures of psychiatric services. Most mental state hospitals reduced their capacities and parallel to this process smaller units, devoted to principles of community psychiatry, associated to general hospitals were created. Overall, the number of hospital driven beds decreased at about 33 %, but in the large hospitals at two thirds within the last 25 years in Baden-Wurttemberg. This process of deinstitutionalization was accompanied by the development of structures for community care, internal reorganization and modernization, and important steps in budget development, which lead to better treatment opportunities for all kinds of psychiatric institutions. The concrete and historical reality of these circumstances and changes, and possible future directions are exemplified for the psychiatric hospital in Weinsberg.