[Psychiatrically ill homeless persons--the forgotten minority].

In Germany for a long time mental illness among homeless people didn't occur as an urging problem. Only lately the number of surveys about mental health problems among homeless people is slowly rising (along with a strong increase of homeless people), most of them being cross-sectional among users of local homes, hostels or shelters. The paper gives a short summary of the historical development, describes the services provided for homeless people in Germany and discusses the findings of the studies conducted in Germany during the last years.