Social-psychiatric services show a preventive impact on involuntary acute psychiatry interventions. Sociodemographic factors and patient variables play a role with regard to the number of involuntary hospitalizations, whereas characteristics of hospitals seemed to play no role.

Because of their disease mentally ill persons are often unable to request and receive necessary help on their own. Hence, local authorities have the legal duty to offer support in subsidiary or complementary ways or to organize help together with other participants concerned with psychiatric care. If the transition from community care to the differently structured regular health care system is too fast there is a danger of worsening of the symptoms. In the city of Bochum health insurance bodies agreed to take over the costs of therapy for mentally ill people via the sociopsychiatric services within the scope of crisis intervention. Background information on the sociopsychiatric services of the city of Bochum is given.

No abstract