[Theoretical considerations on the completion of the role concept in the therapeutic milieu in the nursing home for the somatically ill].

Abstract

In this article the author makes a number of theoretical comments on role conception and role behaviour in the therapeutic milieu of the nursing home for the somatically ill. To begin with he draws a comparison between this milieu and that in a psychiatric hospital, where the notion of the therapeutic living environment has already been put into practice. A conspicuous feature is the difference in the nature of the inhabitants of the two milieus and the reason for their admission. The patient at a psychiatric hospital is there in order to learn to manage a role in society in a new way, the nursing home patient has to try, in an appropriate manner, to learn again to give meaning to the role which he has been deprived of by his physical disability. In this article the author hopes that he has demonstrated that the inmate of the nursing home is doomed to fail without the real and active help of his family or other people who are important to him. Through adequate reflection on their own role behaviour, the staff must try to provide a response to the subjective experience of reality encountered by the patient and his relatives and friends.