[Patient education and information in psychiatry]

All physicians are obliged to inform their patients about their disease and about course, purpose and risks of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Many physicians, however, try to avoid the dialogue with the patients particularly if disaggreable details are to be communicated. This is valid both for somatic medicine and for psychiatry. The openness of information in psychiatry depends on the patient's disease. Schizophrenic patients receive comprehensive information less frequently than patients suffering from mania, major depression, alcoholism and other dependencies. The label "schizophrenia" is generally paraphrased, the possibility of residual damage and the long-term side effects of neuroleptics are not mentioned by many physicians. Patients' knowledge about diagnosis and medical treatment does not depend on the duration of their illness and on the diagnosis but on individual factors: patients with secondary education and patients whose physicians regard comprehensive information to be favourable are better informed. Information about diagnosis and therapy can help the patients to understand their illness and to enhance compliance if the individual experience of the patients, their disease concept and their medical knowledge are taken into consideration. Information can be regarded as an important part of the relation between doctor and patient.