[Outpatient or inpatient treatment? Analysis of indications in psychosomatic medicine]

This is an empirical study of the criteria which indicate inpatient or outpatient treatment. The two essential elements to the process of indication are, firstly, the recommendation of the outpatient clinic conference and, secondly, the preference of the patient. A specially developed test inventory was used for the statistical evaluation of one hundred case decisions of our outpatient clinic conference. As expected, the indication is not reduced to a one-dimensional schema but is the result of a complex process. Nonetheless, several characteristics can be identified, such as the length of the illness, any psychosomatic pretreatment, the recommendations of the first diagnostician and the patient's own wish for a particular type of treatment. In sum, this study is an example of a descriptive analytical approach for the differential research on indication. Such an approach could be of importance when discussing how to control quality of psychosomatic and psychotherapeutic treatments.