The in-patient treatment of migrants with psychiatric disorders causes particular difficulties. There is often a barrier of language and culture that raises problems for the diagnostic and therapeutic process. To solve these problems we developed a bilingual setting by integrating a Turkish psychologist who belongs to a counselling centre into our therapeutic team for at least once a week. This offers the possibility for a very qualified psychopathological assessment as the patient can talk to the Turkish psychologist in his native language and the Turkish psychologist can translate this and his own impression accurately also using the psychiatric language. All relevant themes can be discussed, including the possibility of continuing the therapy in the councelling centre. We investigated the impact of this kind of therapeutic approach on the duration of hospitalisation, remission in terms of psychopathology, rehabilitation level, ratio of readmission and contentment with therapy. The migrants were divided into two groups: Turkish migrants were treated in this special setting, non Turkish migrants were not treated in the manner described. There are shorter periods of hospital treatment for Turkish non-schizophrenic in-patients and Turkish schizophrenic patients achieve higher levels of rehabilitation. Turkish patients with all kinds of psychiatric diagnoses show lower ratios of readmission and express greater contentment with therapy. The psychopathological symptoms themselves, however, are not substantically reduced in this special setting.

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Patient Readmission Germany immigrant hospital patient hospitalization schizophrenia human language disability middle aged Ethnic Groups Turkey (republic) Aged length of stay mental health care Mental Disorders mental disease patient counseling remission Humans Treatment Outcome male female patient satisfaction Article major clinical study adult health care quality Turkey mental hospital Emigration and Immigration Patient Care Team Multilingualism