A Report on the Organisation of a Sectorised System for Psychiatric Care. First Empirical Results

In their “Report about the situation of psychiatry in the Federal Republic of Germany” published in 1975 the “Commission of experts working on the Enquete about the situation of psychiatry in the Federal Republic” (Enquete commission) recommend a fundamental reorganisation of the existing system for the distribution of psychiatric care (hereafter referred to as the “care system”) (7). The psychiatric wing of general hospitals should be the (functioning) centre of a so-called standard care area — a sector. The numerical size of such a care area should be no less than 150,000 inhabitants and should not exceed 350,000 inhabitants. This would be equivalent to a corresponding number of beds/places of about 100 to 200 per standard care area, while psychiatric hospitals at the moment rarely have less than 1000 but often up to 2000 and more psychiatric beds — with a correspondingly large catchment area — at their disposal.