[Psychiatry in Emden--the 1st year]

The article reports on the first developmental stage of a psychiatric department in a location close to the place of residence of the majority of patients. This psychiatric clinic has at present 60 beds and facilities for 20 outpatients. The location of the clinic is in the area of a medium-sized town in a rural district classified as an area in which Public Health services are required to be active. First of all, the article gives a detailed description of the clinic itself and of the population and district it has to look after. Secondly, the article describes the present state and development of negotiations regarding the setting-up of an outpatient treatment ward. In this connection, it became unavoidable to point out the discrepancies between the need of the population to receive adequate psychiatric outpatient treatment on the one hand, and the policy followed by the relevant authorities on the other, the latter being unfortunately coloured by vested interests, both politically and by the class-consciousness of representatives of certain trade guilds and corporations. This is followed by a statistical evaluation of the patients treated on an inpatient, outpatient and consultant basis, together with an attempt to give a brief outline of the relevant epidemiology. Since the Social Psychiatric Service of Emden has close associations with the clinic--a fact which is rather untypical--the authors included a report on the starting-up phase and activity characteristics of that service.