[Establishing psychiatry as a field of municipal policy].

Abstract

How did psychiatry develop as a field of municipal politics in Germany? Decisive prerequisites for this can be found in the reform psychiatry of the early 20th century, but above all in the socio-medical reform movement of the Weimar period, when municipal health authorities set up counselling and support services for mentally ill people. These were instrumentalised by National Socialism for its racist extermination programme, and it was not until the psychiatric reform that began in the 1970s that these approaches were taken up again. The far-reaching responsibilities of the municipal authorities, which had already been established in the Weimar period, supported the resurgence of an active organisation of the local psychiatric care system by the municipal health authorities. With its own social psychiatric services, the task of coordinating psychiatry and structures such as psychosocial working groups, health conferences and community psychiatric associations, psychiatry has become a field of active municipal policy with the goal of an inclusive society.