[Prerequisites and new approaches toward improving the outpatient registration of mental patients]

An increase in the registered numbers of mental outpatients, particularly at the expense of persons with borderline abnormalities, which is attendant by certain social restrictions for the latter group, is fraught with compromising the personality of these on the whole normal persons, which necessitates reorganization of the existing practice of registering patients in psychoneurological institutions. It is proposed that the existing form of registration be applied only to psychotic patients. In accordance with the level criterion patients with mental disorders of the borderline level are not liable to registration, provided their main links and relations in the social environment have remained intact. Registration should be strictly based on such time limits which can be justified on medico-social and clinico-therapeutical grounds.