[The value of the social service unit in ambulatory gerontopsychiatric management]

Care of aged mentally diseased patients is one of the subjects whose reform had been underlined as particularly urgent in the 1975 report on the state of psychiatry in the Federal Republic of Germany. Whereas in psychiatric hospitals there is now evidence of a growing trend to reduced hospital stay and to readmission after a period of release, no change seems to be in sight in respect of caring for the aged on an outpatient basis. The financial losses suffered by public health care organisations for aged mental outpatients have resulted in housing an increasing number of mentally ill persons of old age in homes for the aged, instead of caring for them as psychiatric outpatients. Since more and more aged persons will be represented among the population in future, it is more than ever before imperative to arrive at suggestions for a feasible solution. The article reviews the present situations (including acceptance of existing institutions by the aged) and explains the importance of public social care units in outpatient care of elderly people. The assessment was made by means of an official questionnaire operation in the Land of Baden-Württemberg. Efforts are suggested in respect of revised basis rules of organisation and staff to improve public outpatient gerontopsychiatric care.