German psychiatry is emerging from a black past to a challenging future. Under the Nazis it is thought that about 100,000 psychiatric patients were killed and 300,000 were compulsorily sterilised. Services for the mentally ill had also been adversely affected by two world wars and recession. For 50 years there was little progress. By the 1970s, the government and other institutions took more interest in mental health. Community facilities began to appear such as day centres. Long-stay patients are now being discharged from hospitals and asylums have closed in some states.