[Compulsory hospitalization of psychiatric patients today--a part of emergency management]

Under the impression of an increasing rate of compulsory admission to hospital for the city of Bonn during the past 15 years, the author examines the medical certificates issued by Public Health authorities in 1989, and connects the result with the statistical data of the municipalities and the district hospitals of the Rhineland. In addition to the discussion on the possible causes for the increase (a generally shorter hospitalisation, the increasing number of patients from Bonn and from outside, an intense pressure to legalise compulsory admission to hospital, the duties of a "metropolis") it is specially pointed out that today merely states of emergency of mentally diseased persons lead to compulsory hospitalisation. Frequently there is still a subliminal suspicion of a compulsory segregation or segmentation of mentally diseased persons--a suspicion that is entirely baseless.