13 for a prolonged period, for some of them even for life. This is largely the consequence of having no resources to provide care and support to these persons outside the institutions. More specifically, there is no efficient concept of deinstitutionalization in the Republic of Serbia that would provide the living conditions for persons having mental and/or intellectual disorders within the local community, with their close family. The current concept is not comprehensive and is based on providing services and administering of accommodation as a part of care. Instead, it is necessary to establish a unified national care and support concept for these persons and their families and at the level of local communities form multidisciplinary services that shall be fully equipped in terms of staffing, logistics and finance, to provide a continuing support and care for the persons that require this, including to their families. The types of services and form of accommodation must not be administered in advance. They should be defined based on the needs that are subject to changes and that should be the outcome of duly conducted estimates by the multidisciplinary services at the local community level. The shortcomings of the Law on Protection of Persons with Mental Disorders have still not been eliminated. It has been regulated that the services for protection of mental health in the community are to be organized as the additional activity of psychiatric institutions and health care centres that neither have sufficient human resources nor interest in providing such support. Due to such solution, the deinstitutionalization activities in Serbia are negligible. The Law has introduced isolation measure for psychiatric patients that is not only contrary to the applicable standards, but also to the established practice in Serbia. Furthermore, the Law has prescribed the competence of police officers to maintain order within the psychiatric hospitals, which is not in line with the current standards, considering that these are armed persons wearing uniforms. The present psychiatric hospitals are huge, each of them accommodates around several hundreds of patients. They have largely adopted the character of asylum centres, as numerous patients are excommunicated from the community for more than one month, many of them as long as for a decade, while some even for life. There is a trend of keeping a large number of persons in hospitals for social reasons, as there is no other form of support and their treatment in the community. The court decisions on compulsory hospitalization of persons with mental disorders are mainly based on expertize provided by doctors employed in hospitals proposing such measures. Moreover, there is a number of cases where the consent to hospitalization was provided by persons who were in an agitated condition after being brought by police officers, although the statements given under such circumstances cannot be regarded as legally relevant. NPM believes that the activities to improve the current legislation must be intensified, including the treatment of persons with disabilities placed in social welfare institutions – homes. Namely, a large number of persons with mental and intellectual disorders are placed in remote and often huge institutions, far from their community and their social environment. Also, living conditions in many of these occupancies are rather poor and disregarding the required psychological and sociological treatment. All these institutions lack staff, which has an adverse impact on both the staff members and inmates.