Abstract
Today the role of the outpatient services in mental health care is very important, and highly evaluated. While one of the serious problems in mental health care in Japan is the high rates of the number of beds for psychiatric patients compared with the population. This study surveys some kinds of mental health facilities which accept outpatients and the interconnection among these facilities. The purpose of this study is to obtain basic information for the improvement of mental health facilities in the future. We investigated six mental hospitals, three psychiatric departments of general hospitals, two psychiatric clinics, and three mental health day-care centers. The analysis of the survey is as follows; 1) The rate of schizophrenia patients is high in mental hospitals and day-care centers, and is low in clinics. General hospitals accent all kinds of mental disease. 2) The term of consultation for outpatients is prolonged. This fact proves that treatment is being alone on an outpatient basis. 3) The collaboration among these facilities seems to be based on the specialization in each mental illness. But we find a new tendency : the patients, who are discharged from hospitals, choose to live a community life while they are being given treatment in medical facilities according to the degree of the seriousness of the illness rather than the types of illness.
