A complete cohort of patients, admitted from an urban municipality to the intramural psychiatrie services in the area during the first half of 1974, is followed for altogether 2 years. The study reveals two types of chronicity of patients, either as a continuous residents in hospital or as people with repeated readmissions. Continuity of care on discharge is not very strongly developed. Integration of services probably does not reach much further than between intra- and extra-mural services which already belong to one and the same organisation.