The Occupational Situation and Its Developments

Abstract

The topic of this article is to answer the following question: to which extent first-admission patients were able, after their discharge from the psychiatric hospital, to take up or resume activities and functions which are generally regarded as particularly important or as basis functions (4) of everyday life. This study deals with the participation in professional life. The analysis of these activities refers to the first year after discharge. Thus we draw up a kind of ‘short-term’ prognosis for the occupational activities of first-admission patients and are able to elucidate the integration problems, psychiatric patients are confronted with at a relatively early stage of illness. In this context we also discuss the question to which extent chronic development can be identified at this stage of illness with reference to the permanent loss of certain role functions. The analysis reveals not only the seriousness of the problem, but tries to show at the same time in which fields help seems to be necessary and also possible. A wide spectrum of diagnostic categories was included in the investigation,as the results gained so far are mainly restricted to schizophrenic patients (1,2,5). Up to now other diagnostic categories have been brought in at most as control groups, and in doing so detailed information about the individual diagnostic category assigned to the control group are lost compulsorily. This implies the danger that other non-schizophrenic clinical problem groups are ‘overlooked’ and are therefore not supported to the same extent. ed this support to a larger extent.