Yrjö O. Alanen
The need-adapted approach - developing an integrated and individualized psychotherapeutically oriented treatment of schizophrenic patients  5
Summary
The need-adapted approach means a broad-based, integrated psychotherapeutically oriented treatment model for schizophrenia, in which the therapeutic activities are planned and carried out flexibly and individually in each case, so that they meet the therapeutic needs of the patients as well as the people making up their personal interactional networks ( mostly their families). The approach was developed in Turku, Finland, during the last decades, with the goal that it could be applied more generally to public psychiatric health care. Treatment practices following the basic line of this approach have since been developed and carried out in several centres in Finland and in other Scandinavian countries. In this paper, project results and later developments of this approach are described. According to them, the approach has proven to be successful both with regard to treatment as well as economically. It also increases the humanistic aspect of psychiatry.