[Psychiatry in the general hospital--between crisis and chronicity]

Important parts of the work of a psychiatric department of a district general hospital with regional care duty (115,000 people) are shown by an empirical study. For a period of 4 weeks all emergency and crisis situations in which patients appeared on the ward directly were registered. All telephone calls made for the same purpose were registered, too. The kind of the crisis and the kind of help were put into categories. The result of this study was, that in an urban area with approx. 100,000 people one can expect approx. 200 persons (2% of the population) to be in need of a frequent in many cases ward supported crisis intervention. The second part of the study shows with a patients case report, what possibilities do exist in the field of rehabilitation of chronic psychiatric patients within the community and what inherent difficulties there are.