Multidimensionale pharmakopsychiatrische Untersuchungen mit dem Neuroleptikum Perazin*: 7. Mitteilung: Methodologische Ergebnisse

Psychiatric clinic of the Free University of Berlin; Department of Clinical Psychiatry and Polyclinic

The Department of Psychiatry in its present form has developed since 1968, when the psychiatric branch of the Psychiatrische und Neurologische Klinik (Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic), the traditional type of a West German university hospital comprising psychiatry and neurology in one chair, became autonomous with the establishment of an independent chair of psychiatry. This was an early step in the separation of psychiatry and neurology, a situation which is now to be seen in all German universities. Moreover, during the last decade almost all psychiatric university departments have been more or less sub-divided into sub-specialities. This process has been carried to its furthest extreme in West Berlin which now has departments of clinical psychiatry, geronto-psychiatry, social psychiatry, psychosomatics, child and adolescent psychiatry, neuropsychopharmacology, psychophysiology, student mental health, and forensic psychiatry. The lines of demarcation have been drawn according to somewhat divergent (historical, personal, conceptual) criteria, so that the individual departments differ in size, research interests and research facilities. More than 10 professors, 15 senior doctors and about 50 assistants (physicians, psychologists, sociologists, mathematicians, chemists and engineers) make up a critical mass, but centrifugal forces are often dominant and restrain the optimal use of all facilities for real interdisciplinary collaboration in the sense of what has been described as the ‘agricultural’ approach to research (Shepherd, 1981).