Heinz Häfner

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Heinz Häfner (born May 20, 1926 in Munich ) is a German psychiatrist . He is the founder of the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim.

Live and act

Häfner studied medicine , psychology and philosophy in Munich. His medical activity finally took him to Heidelberg in 1958 via Tübingen, Munich and London. In 1967, Häfner was offered the chair of psychiatry at the Faculty of Clinical Medicine (since 2008 Medical Faculty) Mannheim at the University of Heidelberg .

Very early on he made efforts to reform psychiatry in post-war Germany and to humanize how society dealt with the mentally ill. In 1965 he published a memorandum on the plight of the care of the mentally ill in Germany, in which the recommendations of the 1975 Psychiatry Quête were largely anticipated. Together with Caspar Kulenkampff and Walter Picard (Member of the Bundestag), he prepared the Federal Government's Expert Commission on Psychiatry (1970–1975) and served as its deputy chairman. From 1976 to 2008 he advised the WHO as an expert on mental health and was chairman or member of numerous international expert commissions. From 1974 to 1983, Häfner was a member of the Science Council of the Federal Republic of Germany, initially as a member of the Medicine Committee, later as its chairman and chairman of the scientific commissions. Häfner is an honorary member of numerous national and international specialist societies.

He is the initiator and was the first director of the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim, with which he was able to implement his vision of community-based care for mentally ill people. During the 19 years of his leadership, Häfner was able to develop the central institute into a national research institute, which soon gained international attention. He initiated two successful Collaborative Research Centers 1972–1985 and 1987–1998 of the German Research Foundation in the field of psychiatric epidemiology and explanatory models of mental illnesses.

One focus of his research was the epidemiology of mental disorders from a very early stage, he examined the consequences of extreme stress in former concentration camp inmates and the frequency of acts of violence by mentally ill people in Germany as well as the distribution and causes of suicidal behavior in the population. Another research focus was the systematic investigation of the early detection and course of schizophrenia .

In 2004, his research results on the mental illness of the Bavarian King Ludwig II went through the media internationally and in 2008, following an interdisciplinary research project by the Fritz Thyssen and Robert Bosch Foundation, his analysis of the psychiatric report on the king and the questionable disempowerment and incapacitation process was published of the results in his book A King Is Eliminated: Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Honors, awards and memberships

Publications (selection)

  • Change of constitutional characteristics in endogenous psychoses after shock and convulsive therapy. Dissertation . Munich 1949.
  • Basics and opposites of the image of man with Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen. Dissertation. Munich 1951.
  • Guilty life and conscience. Contribution to a personal depth psychology. Velcro. Stuttgart 1956.
  • Psychopaths. Existential analysis of the structure and course of psychopathies. (= Monographs from all areas of neurology and psychiatry. 94). Springer, Berlin et al. 1961.
  • with Walter Ritter von Baeyer and Karl Peter Kisker : Psychiatry of the persecuted. Psychopathological and expert experience on victims of National Socialist persecution and comparable extreme stresses. Springer, Berlin et al. 1964.
  • Reality and Effectiveness of Evil. (= Studies and reports of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria. 34). Echter-Verlag, Würzburg 1965.
  • Insights into mad worlds. A documentation. In: Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Ed.): Kursbuch. Volume 3, 1965.
  • as editor: Psychiatric Epidemiology. History, introduction and selected research results. (= Monographs from the entire field of psychiatry. 17). Springer, Berlin et al. 1978, ISBN 3-540-08629-3 .
  • as editor: Estimating needs for mental health care. A contribution of epidemiology. Springer, Berlin et al. 1979, ISBN 3-540-09425-3 .
  • as editor: Gerontopsychiatrie. Fischer, Stuttgart et al. 1981, ISBN 3-437-10679-1 .
  • as Ed .: Research for Mental Health. An inventory of psychiatric, psychotherapeutic and psychosomatic research and its problems in the Federal Republic of Germany. Springer, Berlin et al. 1983, ISBN 3-540-12099-8 .
  • Mental health in old age. The current state of research on the type, frequency and causes of mental illness in old age and the possibilities of their prevention and treatment. (= Report to the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology ). Fischer, Stuttgart et al. 1986, ISBN 3-437-11021-7 .
  • as editor: Search for the causes of schizophrenia. 5 volumes. Springer, Berlin 1987-2005.
  • with Wolfram an der Heiden and Bertram Krumm: The effectiveness of outpatient psychiatric care. A model for evaluating extramural services. (= Monographs from the entire field of psychiatry. 56). Springer, Berlin et al. 1989, ISBN 3-540-50868-6 .
  • Psychiatry. A reading book for advanced learners. Fischer, Stuttgart et al. 1991, ISBN 3-437-00640-1 .
  • as editor: Mental illnesses and brain function in old age. (= Current Psychiatry. 8). Fischer, Stuttgart et al. 1992, ISBN 3-437-11417-4 .
  • as editor: What is schizophrenia? G. Fischer, Stuttgart et al. 1995, ISBN 3-437-11602-9 .
  • as editor: New Research in Psychiatry. Hogrefe and Huber, Seattle et al. 1996, ISBN 0-88937-174-1 .
  • Is it all just the disease? Recent results from schizophrenia research. (= Writings of the mathematical and natural science class of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. 7). Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-540-67494-2 .
  • as editor: Risk and protective factors in schizophrenia. Towards a conceptual model of the disease process. Steinkopff et al., Darmstadt 2002, ISBN 3-7985-1365-1 .
  • A king is eliminated. Ludwig II of Bavaria. C. H. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56888-6 . (2nd edition, 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61784-3 )
  • with UM Staudinger (Ed.): What is age (n)? New answers to a seemingly simple question. (= Writings of the mathematical and natural science class of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. 18). Springer, Berlin et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-76710-7 .
  • Schizophrenia. Recognize, understand, treat. C. H. Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-58797-9 .
  • with Konrad Beyreuther and Wolfgang Schlicht (eds.): Shaping aging. Medicine - Technology - Environment. (= Writings of the mathematical and natural science class of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. 21). Springer, Berlin et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-642-14352-6 .
  • with Hans Martini (ed.): The Central Institute for Mental Health. Founding history and present. C. H. Beck, Munich, 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62968-6 .
  • with A. Bechdolf, J. Klosterkötter and K. Maurer (eds.): Psychoses - early detection and early intervention. The practical guide. (= Series of publications Competence Network Schizophrenia ). Schattauer Verlag, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-7945-2704-5 .
  • with P. Kielmansegg (Ed.): Age and Aging - Realities and Interpretations. (= Writings of the mathematical and natural science class of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. 22). Springer, Berlin et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-24831-3 .
  • Psychiatry reform in Germany. Prehistory, implementation and aftermath of the psychiatry inquiry. An experience report. In: Heidelberger Jahrbücher Online, 2016, Volume 1, Article 8, pp. 119–145, PDF (accessed December 13, 2017).
  • The riddle of schizophrenia. A disease is deciphered. 4th, completely revised edition. C. H. Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-69217-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Pross , Sonja Schweitzer and Julia Wagner: "We wanted to run into ruin". The history of the socialist patient collective Heidelberg. Psychiatrie Verlag, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3884146729 (summary in English (pdf) )
  2. ↑ TUD awards the first Bühler Medal of Honor on June 19, 2013 to Prof. Heinz Häfner at the Science Information Service (idw-online.de); Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  3. ↑ Prof. Heinz Häfner, founder of the Central Institute for Mental Health Mannheim, receives the DGPPN's highest award, the Wilhelm Griesinger Medal of the DGPPN 2013. (No longer available online.) In: dgppn.de. Archived from the original on November 18, 2015 ; accessed on November 17, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dgppn.de

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Haefner, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich