Family care and asylum psychiatry in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The controversy among German psychiatrists about the best caring-system for the insane - asylums versus family-care - in the middle of the nineteenth century has been analysed on the basis of all contributions to this topic in the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie (AZP) in the period between 1844 and 1902. These debates led to a decision in 1868 with a clear vote for continuing the asylum-policy that has had lasting effects up to the present day. The AZP and its editors had a decisive influence on the debate, although it was based on an already antiquated background. Although asylum-psychiatry succeeded in this controversy, at the turn of the century family-care was established in Germany as an additional and feasible form of care outside the asylums. This development was stopped in the national-socialistic period and has not recovered since.