[Therapeutic atmosphere in psychiatric wards--an attitudinal study (author's transl)]

Psychiatric care in the Federal Republic of Germany has been consistently improving in recent years. In many psychiatric institutions therapeutic development has moved away from the "custodian" pattern toward a sociopsychiatric and patientoriented therapy. Those who are mainly concerned with this change, namely, the patients themselves, have so far been approached only rarely to give their opinion about conditions in their ward or to say how they experience and assess the situation in their ward. The present study attempts to explore, with the help of a questionnaire, the attitude of inpatients toward the psychiatric institution or ward. The following results are considered to be important: There is hardly any difference in the attitude of the patients toward the four hospitals investigated in Baden-Württemberg; Patients treated in open wards were significantly more satisfied than patients in closed wards; with increasing age, the patients expressed greater satisfaction with regard to the hopes for the future imparted by aimed therapeutic measures, and also with regard to material aspects of their environment; female patients are on the whole more content than male ones; the socioeconomical level and diagnosis of the patients influence their attitude toward the psychiatric institution.