In order to strengthen long-term care for people with severe mental illnesses, the "CLOSED" health project will be launched in Lower Saxony on 1 January 2026 with broad scientific support. Funded by the Innovation Fund of the Joint Federal Committee (G-BA), the project aims to provide new insights into people who are treated frequently or over a long period of time in closed psychiatric facilities. The study will focus, among other things, on evaluating care and treatment processes, analysing the risks of unfavourable outcomes, and better addressing the needs of people with long-term illnesses. The results should contribute to the further development of medical services and their better adaptation to the needs of those affected. In addition, this should help to avoid overloading acute care clinics due to misallocation of beds and ultimately improve the quality of care for all patients.
"People with severe mental illnesses face major challenges in our healthcare system," explains Lower Saxony's Minister of Health, Dr Andreas Philippi. "On the one hand, there is a lack of suitable outpatient and, above all, outreach care structures tailored to the needs of people with severe mental illnesses. This weakens the possibilities for preventing severe courses of illness. On the other hand, the tight housing market leads to a backlog in sheltered housing facilities, with the result that people with mental illnesses so severe that they cannot live alone cannot find a home that will take them in. They remain in acute care clinics. We also want to use the findings from the project to make care for chronically and severely ill people with mental illnesses more targeted and make it easier for them to return to a self-determined life."
Under the leadership of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Health and the aQua Institute in Göttingen, the Centre for Health Economics Research Hannover (CHERH) at Leibniz University Hannover, AOK Lower Saxony, the Centre for Mental Health at the University Hospital of Brandenburg Medical School, and the Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents at the University Hospital Cologne. The project is scheduled to run for three years.
