[Psychiatry in a country hospital in Freudenstadt, close to the patients' domicile. A critical preliminary review after three years (author's transl)].

The article reports on the setting-up of a department of psychiatry at the general hospital in the Freudenstadt district. The department comprises 60 beds and represents the first hospital-integrated psychiatric department of its kind of the Baden-Württemberg Land government. It was inaugurated in the summer of 1976. The experience collected over a period of 3 years, presented here in detail, can be made use of within the overall framework of the discussions on the controversial issue of psychiatric departments in general hospitals, which has also been discussed on a political plane.