[After care services for psychiatric patients: organizational problems and perspectives exemplified by the service area of Honolulu, Hawaii, USA--initial status, empirical results].

During the past decades much effort has been taken to encourage community - based treatment and service for mental patients, and to reduce the share of the large custodial institutions within mental health care systems. Both in the United States and in W-Germany (FRG) there has been a growing awareness that major inadequacies occur especially with providing community--based out-care for the seriously mentally ill. Much of these inadequacies refer to those released from the mental hospital with such needs as help to structure their everyday lives, adequate housing, nutrition, support for the families and neighborhoods involved, financial support, and further treatment. Part 1 delines the growing awareness of these problems with reference to the expectations of "reformists" both for the U.S. and the F.R.G. The paper then describes empirical data about the care given to patients released from the psychiatric hospital within a 90 days' period in the State of Hawaii, U.S.A. It also gives a structural description of agencies involved in the aftercare services, and relates this both to the empirical findings and reformists' views on aftercare needs.