40 the number of check-ups in dispensaries. However, a large number of patients are still hospitalized in the most of the other psychiatric hospitals98. Certain facilities, within the hospitals for psychiatric diseases, are still old, dilapidated buildings which are maintained with a lot of difficulties, and sleeping rooms with big capacities are not converted into smaller rooms. Accommodation conditions are particularly poor in the Special Hospital for Psychiatric Diseases “Kovin”, where a large number of facilities where patients are placed are dilapidated. In certain hospitals, there are no separate rooms for visits, but the visits are organized in the corridors of departments and in common rooms, and if whether conditions and patient’s condition allow, in the garden of the Hospital. Certain hospitals do not have separate rooms to place restrained patients, but those patients are place in the rooms with the other patients. One of the important problems in the psychiatric hospitals is insufficient number of medical staff and occupational/working therapists, and insufficient staff structure leads to the fact that the work of the staff is not fully in line with the needs of patients. In the course of the reporting period, centres for the protection of mental health in Kikinda and Vršac worked on the part of the project activities related to the development of the system for protection of mental health within a community and related to the reform of the forensic psychiatry, and the actors responsible for these temporary character activities were special psychiatric hospitals “Sveti Vračevi” and “Dr. Slavoljub Bakalović”. In addition, counselling in Kragujevac functioned under the similar principle. However, functioning of the centre for the protection of mental health is conditioned with the duration of all these activities. The fact that there are no adequate services for the protection of mental health within a community, which might take care of patients after hospital treatment, inhibits continuous care or adequate psycho-social rehabilitation. This increases the possibility of worsening the main disease and accelerates deterioration of personality, while the duration of patient hospitalization, with no medical reasons, represents by itself inhuman treatment. In line with the previously issued NPM recommendations, Ministry of Health composed leaflets on the patients’ rights, dedicated to patients and their families. Likewise, in the course of the reporting period, Ministry composed a large number of instructions and forms99 with the aim of harmonizing the treatment of persons with mental disorders and improvement of the quality of health-care and submitted them to all psychiatric hospital. GENERAL RECOMMENDATION FOR REMEDYING THE IDENTIFIED SHORTCOMING It is necessary to intensify all activities related to decentralization in terms of abandoning the practice of long-term holding of patients in the robust, dislocated hospitals, and with the aim to care and treat them within a community. Is it necessary to improve provisions of the Law on the Protection of Persons with Mental Disorders, particularly those related to the establishment of units in charge of activities aiming at protection of mental health within a community; procedures of voluntary and forced hospitalization; role of the police in regards persons with mental disorders; physical restraint; and particularly provision envisaging measure of patient’s isolation. Ministry of Health should undertake measures so as to reconstruct certain accommodation capacities in big psychiatric hospitals. Ministry of Health should undertake measures so as to engage additional medical staff 98 99 Specialized hospital for psychiatric diseases “Dr. Slavoljub Bakalović”, Special hospital for psychiatric diseases „Sveti Vračevi“, Specialized hospital for psychiatric diseases “Gornja Toponica” and Specialized hospital for psychiatric diseases “Kovin“ Forms for forced and voluntary hospitalization; forms for decision on detention in the course of involuntary hospitalisation; forms for individual treatment plan; house rules of the institutions for treatment of persons with mental disorders and the others.