Employment, attitudes toward work, and quality of life among people with schizophrenia in three countries.

This study examines attitudes toward work, work incentives, and the impact of work on quality of life for people with schizophrenia, and investigates whether these findings differ among Western countries. We interviewed 24 randomly selected subjects with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder (12 employed and 12 unemployed) at each of three sites: Boulder, Colorado, United States; Berlin, Germany; and Berne, Switzerland. No significant differences were found in the subjects' attitudes toward work or subjective well-being, although Swiss patients had a higher cost-of-living-adjusted income.

[Experiences with handling violence in the psychiatric clinic].

Open or hidden violence tends to be ubiquitous in the psychiatric hospital. It causes tensions, anxiousness, burnout, and much human suffering. Especially exposed are psychiatric nurses.

[The "WunderBar"--a project for reducing drug abuse in the psychiatric hospital].

A major reason for the patients' increasing drug abuse is inactivity and tediousness. The psychiatric hospital reacts primarily with repression but then tries more constructive measures: a special room, a sort of bar and disco for young people is created allowing all sorts of leisure activities and informal meetings. The target population of young patients is successfully engaged, they help rising the "WonderBar" which seems to gain some importance to them, and in the hospital, the paralysing feelings of helplessness in front of the drug problems disappear.

[Folie à deux. Review of the literature and an unusual case].

We present a review of the concept's history and discuss different possible varieties of "folie à deux". Following this we report the case of a couple whose "folie à deux" has lasted for ten years. They have four of their own children and three further children from the husband's first marriage.

[Psychotherapy in the psychiatric institution--on therapy at the other pole of the diagnostic spectrum].

In psychiatric facilities we treat patients with severe disturbances under conditions which do not fulfill what are generally thought to be the necessary ingredients of psychotherapy. Additionally our staff tend to devalorate themselves by thinking that in fact they should work differently that, what they do, was actually not real psychotherapy. The present paper shows with concrete examples what is psychiatric psychotherapy, it asks what are the needs of severely ill patients, and concludes that this difficult work is real psychotherapy in the best sense of the word.