returns As a night nurse of his tour to the station room, beats him in the corridor thick smoke. It is the early Morning of the 6. March 1971, in the Psychiatric University clinic in Zurich, all the Burghölzli call to the hill that stands in front of it.

The smoke flows out of the geriatric men's section C1. There may be a paper catch basket is in the heating fire. The fire brigade is called out, but remains helpless and the men have no key to open the doors or barred Windows. And also, the staff has not. As the fire brigade comes and the doors beyond, it is too late. 28 of the 43 patients are suffocated, others injured. The a are not woken up, the others hammered in vain against the doors. The fire in the Burghölzli is a beacon of a psychiatry , the need to open more.

Up to 40 years

locked up for Two months after the fire, a young Intern begins in the Burghölzli his work. "I remember a patient in the back of the clinic, who were imprisoned up to 40 years, with no hope of being released," he says. The psychiatrist is Daniel Bright, was for 18 years Director of the Hospital at Burghölzli, and has made as a researcher and a therapist for depression is known. Light has always fought for an open, social psychiatry, which combines psychotherapy with drug treatment. His successor, Erich Seifritz says, he will go even further. He is seeking "a synergy of biomedical, psychological and social therapy work", which will be applied to his clinic and researched.

The fire in the Burghölzli, the biggest disaster in the 150-year history of the Institution, occurred three years after the walls had been torn down to the clinic. It was recognized that mentally ill people were not a danger to the Public. This, in turn, had a lot to do with the psychotropic drugs to which it is applied for 20 years. "This helped, but also served to the patients to shut up," recalls Daniel Bright "and she had serious side effects." Seifritz, adds: "The drugs aimed to treat symptoms. The symptoms of Depression and / or antipsychotics to improve, for example, antidepressants are the symptoms of a psychosis."

Bleuler, Freud, Jung,

The Swiss psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler, Director of the Hospital from 1898 to 1927, was a Reformer. He thought therapeutically modern, recognized several mental diseases such as schizophrenia or autism. He also distinguished himself as a therapist of psychotic patients, because he took it seriously. It had touched the fate of his five years older sister Pauline, who was suffering from a severe psychosis.

Two patients of the Psychiatric University clinic Burghölzli in occupational therapy in 1966. Photo: Keystone

especially Bleuler, against large local Resistances of a led, the psycho-analysis of Sigmund Freud in Zurich, at the time, so unheard-of as a controversial method of therapy, in the center of the standby state, the patients listen to. The Patient on the Couch and the analyst behind him operate, which Suggest that Freud, in his crystal clear prose, "Remember, by working" had called.

A young, brilliant, ambitious pastor's son from Basel, she moved to Zurich to get used to the new method of treatment known: Carl Gustav Jung. Of his admiration for Freud, scientific differences, and then a break of friendship developed. This is accelerated by the fact that Young struck in the thirty years of anti-Semitic remarks, although he played Freud's performance, never down. Jung was very interested in the treatment of psychotic patients and encouraged them to Draw their hardships and later founded his own school of analytical psychology.

medication help

The fire in the Burghölzli serious grievances made in the clinic significantly. Many patients were, in fact, and for decades to come stationary in the Burghölzli housed – is a specific treatment barely existed. The first antipsychotics and antidepressants were first developed in the late fifty years, outpatient care facilities, there was virtually. The writer Friedrich Glauser, who spent many years of his life in psychiatric hospitals, including in the Burghölzli, has described his experiences in "Matto regiert", his most haunting book. When it sparked a scandal – and then psychiatric reforms.

The Psychiatric University clinic today. Patients are increasingly being treated at home. Photo: Samuel Schalch

As to the Burghölzli today, 150 years after its founding? A therapy is only as good as the therapist, so the question cannot be generalized. But this is not true: that one goes to the clinic to continue in new ways. Thus, it was shortened in the Era of Daniel Bright, the average duration of treatment from 180 to 28 days systematically, in order to prevent that the patients remain in the hospital longer than necessary, and their autonomy and social Integration lose. Today, the vast majority of the stations will open, says Erich Seifritz. This would allow, among other things, more effective therapies and drugs. In addition, the clinic uses the English model of the "Home Treatment" in a targeted manner. Here, patients are visited at home and treated, which saves many the stay in the hospital. Also forced his teachings have become rare.

hope on psychedelics

in Addition, in the clinic early on for Alternatives to conventional psychiatric drugs. In addition to the focus in psychotherapy research, in particular, psychedelics are being explored as a possible innovative treatment elements. The discovery of LSD by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1943, continued enormous, world-wide hopes that the insights in the workings of the psychosis and of LSD as a therapy support medium. When the U.S. banned the substance, and other countries followed, stopped the research.

passed But it was back in Zurich and again at the Burghölzli, where the research on the effect of use of various substances and experiences, the psychologists and statisticians Adi Dittrich. In 1980, joined the psychiatrist Franz Xaver Vollenweider to the ISM conducts research on the therapeutic effects of hallucinogenic substances such as Psilocybin in the treatment of depression and alcohol. Vollenweider has two studies going on, which he performs with great effort and in double-blind experiments. The substance sets to those regions in the brain, he says, for the autobiographical Self-responsible, so also the Thoughts and Brooding Depressive, their regretful Thinking about the Past or Worries about the future.

full weiders Mr Boris Quednow, a pharmaco-psycho-Loge and as a drug expert in the Public demand, the scientific climate at the Psychiatric University clinic in a similar way. He came 15 years ago at the Burghölzli, he says, "because the clinic had just in the experimental neuro-psycho-pharmacology has a very good reputation and still has".

Forel and the eugenics

some of the therapists, despite the best of intentions to fatal conclusions, show the views of another famous clinic Director at the Burghölzli: Auguste Forel. Much voice so for him. The social Democrat was a staunch pacifist and founded as a teetotaler named after him addiction clinic in the vicinity of Winterthur. In addition, he had been in the 19th century. Century, hypnosis as a treatment method, a method that has been used since a few years back therapeutically.

Forel was a staunch social reformer and advocated the equality of the sexes. At the same time, he devoted himself to but of eugenics and campaigned for the forced sterilization of allegedly inferior. The Nazis thought his claim is fatal to an end. Auguste Forel would have been appalled at what you disabled did to.

150.pukzh.ch: The Website provides an Overview of the Events for the 150-year anniversary.

Created: 05.03.2020, 20:49 PM