From Kraepelin to a modern and integrative scientific discipline: the development of transcultural psychiatry in Germany.

The roots of transcultural psychiatry in Germany can be traced back to Emil Kraepelin, who made the first culturally comparative observations on mental disorders in Southeast Asia at the start of the 20th century. Since the beginning of the 1970s, contributors to the literature of transcultural psychiatry in Germany have been predominantly concerned with the mental health of migrant workers from Mediterranean countries, particularly the practical difficulties and therapeutic implications of inpatient psychiatric treatment of these migrant groups. The inauguration of the Section on Transcultural Psychiatry of the German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy 20 years ago reflected an increasing scientific interest in this topic.

[Measurement invariance of the German version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D 20) among males and females with and without a history of migration].

Objective: The measurement invariance of the German version of the Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression scale (CES-D 20) among men and women with and without migration background has not been studied yet.

Methods: A total of 2786 employed persons without (female n = 1772, male n = 598) and with an immigrant background (female n = 301, male n = 115) were included in the study. The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to test for the strong factorial invariance and to estimate latent mean differences.

Depressive symptoms in first-and second-generation migrants: a cross-sectional study of a multi-ethnic working population.

Background: Migrants in Europe may suffer from depression more often than the native-born population of the particular host country. Reports about the prevalence of depression in migrants are, however, heterogeneous and the possible causes are the subject of controversial discussion.

Aims: The aims of this study are to determine the incidence of depressiveness in a large multi-ethnic working population with and without a history of migration, and to investigate possible connections with migration status and acculturation criteria.

[Evaluation of therapy outcome on a psychiatric admission ward. Background, methods and first results of a project on quality management].

Background: Quality management is an important management tool in modern health care systems. This applies also to the mental health care system, where in the past decade many concepts have been developed on how to implement quality management appropriately and successfully. However, for the German speaking countries there are only very few studies on the evaluation of therapy outcome in psychiatric inpatient populations available, furthermore they deal primarily with diagnostic subgroups.

Hannover study on long-stay hospitalization - part II: Characteristics and care conditions of long-stay hospitalization in cases of chronic mental illness.

Background: Long-stay hospitalization is often a consequence of insufficient care structures. This article examines the characteristics and care conditions of long-stay hospitalization (LSH) in an urban area in Germany.

Methods: Extensive data of patients in the urban catchment area of the Medical School of Hannover, capital of Lower Saxony, were evaluated during a 10 years period.

[Reaching migrants for preventive care: optimization of access and utilization].

Migrants belong to the hard-to-reach group in health and preventive care. Essential criteria for the sustainable effectiveness of preventive and health promotion consist in the proper selection of target groups and successfully approaching them. The knowledge of possible barriers that make the access to preventive care and health promotion more difficult, e.

[Integration of immigrants into the mental health care system in Germany].

Objective: Due to the effects of globalization there has to be dealt with an increased number of immigrants in the German health care system. However, esp. the mental health care system in Germany is not sufficiently prepared for this challenge.

[Longer-term effects of inpatient vocational and ergotherapeutic measures on the vocational integration of patients with schizophrenia].

Objective: Unemployment rates are high in people with schizophrenia, so that considerable importance is attached to measures to improve their ability to work and their vocational integration.

Methods: In a study of the German Research Network on Schizophrenia the long-term effects of four-week vocational and ergotherapeutic measures on in-patients were investigated. The target criteria were the vocational integration, level of general functioning (Global Assessment of Functioning Scale) and psychopathology (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale).

[Vocational therapy in schizophrenia: effects only with some patients and with which patients?].

Objectives: In a previous study the effectiveness of vocational therapy was evaluated using the Osnabrück Profile of Working Abilities (O-AFP). No or only minor effects were detected. The goal of this reanalysis is to identify distinct responder groups.

Hannover study on long-stay hospitalization - part I: prediction of long-stay hospitalisation in cases of chronic mental illness.

Background: The problem of long-stay hospitalization is still a pressing issue. In this study we examined the possibility of detecting and characterising the group at risk of long-stay hospitalization in advance.

Methods: This study examines the data of patients in the urban catchment area of the Medical University of Hannover, capital of Lower Saxony, Germany, during a period of 10 years.

[Do the effects of inpatient vocational therapy and ergotherapy approaches differ in schizophrenic patients? Results of a controlled multicenter study of the german research network on schizophrenia].

For some decades, vocational therapy approaches have been an integral part of inpatient psychiatric treatment of patients with schizophrenia. Like most sociotherapeutic measures, they are largely hypothesis-based. So far, their effectiveness has been subjected to very little scientific scrutiny.

Treatment concepts of day hospitals for general psychiatric patients. Findings from a national survey in Germany.

Psychiatric day hospital treatment concepts have to deal with a wide spectrum of mental disorders. We raised the question, if day hospitals can be differentiated concerning their treatment concepts and if so how much this is reflected in their structural and procedural features. In 1999 a survey was initiated concerning structure, concept and method of treatment in psychiatric day hospitals for adults in Germany.