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  • Title: Psychiatric hospitalization in Poland.
    Author: Frydman L.
    Journal: Soc Sci Med; 1983; 17(10):617-23. PubMed ID: 6879223.
    Abstract:
    An overview of psychiatric hospitalization in Poland is presented in the context of Polish political and socio-cultural developments. The areas addressed include: the characteristics of the patient population; the organization of Polish mental health service; the nature of psychiatric treatment; psychiatric legislation; patients' rights; and the training and social status of the various mental health professionals. In spite of the meager resources allocated to mental health services, and the consequent staff shortages and overcrowded, drab living conditions in psychiatric facilities, the care afforded patients is generally humane and nonoppressive. Polish psychiatry has succeeded in maintaining its professional autonomy and has assumed a leadership role in the modernization of its service delivery system. After first disputing some widely-held Western perceptions concerning mental health care in Eastern Europe and then depicting the sociocultural setting of institutional psychiatry in Poland, the author provides an overview of the patient population, staff, and organization of the psychiatric hospital in Poland. He then discusses involuntary commitment and the development of what is likely to be the next version of Poland's Mental Health Act. He also compares the rights of psychiatric patients in Poland and the United States, and presents an optimistic appraisal of the future of patients' rights in Poland.
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