[How does a general hospital psychiatric unit deal with violent patients? The border between community psychiatric services and forensic psychiatric hospitals].

ISSUE: In psychiatric and psychotherapeutic clinics that are responsible for supplying care for a region, how often are patients transferred to forensic psychiatric hospitals? Is there a tendency to "send off" aggressive or threatening patients as quickly as possible?

METHOD: In the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic clinic responsible for the Berlin's Neukölln district, for one year (2000) all patients who committed a severe criminal offence immediately before or during their in-patient treatment were registered for observation in 2000. The steps of investigation and further legal consequences were recorded.

RESULTS: During the period of observation, 0.1 percent of the patients were transferred from the clinic to a forensic psychiatric hospital. Weeks or months after their regular release, 0.4 percent of the patients were committed to a forensic department. The court ordered an ambulant psychiatric evaluation for 0.5 percent of the patients.

CONCLUSION: Only a few patients were transferred to forensic psychiatric hospitals. A tendency to "send off" aggressive patients as soon as possible, thus abusing forensic psychiatry, was not found in this study.