50 Jahre Sozialpsychiatrie: Zwischen Reform und radikaler Alternative

There are many people with interesting stories at the Allerweltshaus in Cologne. At the storytelling café, they come together to tell their stories, listen and talk in a cozy atmosphere. Everyone is welcome to share their experiences, thoughts and questions - on topics that concern us all.

One particularly exciting guest is Klaus Jansen-Kayser. He has worked in psychiatry for over 45 years and has experienced a lot. In his podcast and in the storytelling café, he talks about the changes in German psychiatry and the experiences he has gained in the process:

Freedom | heals |
On January 27, 2026, I was already a guest at the storytelling café at the Allerweltshaus in Cologne. At that time, I spoke about my history in the development of Cologne's (social) psychiatry and the services that have emerged in the period from 1980 to the present day.

On my second visit to the storytelling café, I would like to talk about how the conflict between "official" psychiatric care and the opposition to any kind of institutional psychiatry looked in Cologne in particular, and in the Rhineland in general in the 1970s and 1980s and afterwards. What completely different attitudes and approaches there were to dealing with people with mental health problems. For this discussion round, I will try to talk to some of the actors
from this time.

Freedom | heals | - 50 years of social psychiatry:
Confrontation between established psychiatry and radical alternatives
Klaus Jansen-Kayser, born in 1955, has lived in Cologne since 1980.
- 1975: Trained as a nurse in a psychiatric clinic
- 1980: Founded the (first) day clinic for psychiatry in Cologne
- 1989: Move to the first social psychiatric center in Cologne-Ehrenfeld
- 2012: Establishment of "Integrated Care for Cologne" - social psychiatry without inpatient treatment
- 2019: Retirement after 45 years of psychiatric work
- 2020: Co-founder of the association "LaongoCologne e. V." (support for a village in Burkina Faso)

Since October 2020, Klaus Jansen-Kayser has hosted a podcast in which experiences from 50 years of German psychiatry are regularly shared.
Every 14 days, Fridays at 8 pm.
The podcast is available on all common podcast platforms and directly here:

From the guardroom to the community - 50 years of German psychiatry - so what?