[Improve the quality of the inpatient psychiatric care]

Psychiatric care has changed dramatically from inpatient to outpatient care in the last decades. While a lot of resources have been spent on developing outpatient care, less interest has been invested in inpatient care, which has repeatedly been critisezed for being dominated by control, lack of collaboration between staff and patient and boredom. We suggest that there are three main functions of the psychiatric ward: the asylum function, the intensive care and the observational/diagnostic function. We also present some recent projects aimed at improving the quality of care and we argue for more involvment of the psychiatrists in the internal life and functioning of the psychiatric ward.