[The future of the psychiatric hospital--dissolution or change?]

A great variety of therapeutic models and alternative ways of taking care of the mentally disturbed have lately made the future of the independent psychiatric hospital rather uncertain. Out-patient and partially in-patient facilities, psychiatric wards within the frame of general hospitals, the transfer of chronic cases to non-psychiatric nursing homes, and redress in cases of misplaced persons, constitute steps and measures entailing a considerable shrinkage in the size and extent of the psychiatric hospital of today, although the alternatives mentioned cannot, of course, entirely replace it. There is in the population an estimated need for 1.1 to 1.6 psychiatric hospital beds for every 1000 of persons. The psychiatric hospital of the future should aim at attending to and satisfy the various needs of the following three categories, i.e. 1. crisis intervention in cases of gravely upset, psychotically agitated or suicidal patients, 2. programs of intensive therapy by specialized nursing teams for average and long-term mentally disturbed patients, and finally, 3. a certain supply of asylums for the comparatively small number of most severely handicapped persons. The experiences drawn from these combined operations will be of great value to the research field, as well as in the basic and continued training of personnel.