Institutional Experience and research
For more than 20 years, Dagmar Zimmer-Hoefler has been chief psychiatrist at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Zurich, working as head of the research group of the department for Social Psychiatry, for most of the time in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Ambros Uchtenhagen and later with Prof. Dr. Daniel Hell. In this context, she developed and led the Social Psychiatric Research Group, including different National Research Program participations funded by the Swiss National Funds for Scientific Research as well as several prospective follow-up studies about the long-term development of heroin-addicted young Swiss people in different treatments. One study included a comparison with a representative „normal“ control group, matched for age and gender. From those studies emerged the development of a research network for Swiss therapeutic communities with annual symposia over several years. Simultaneously, Dagmar Zimmer-Hoefler was responsible for the development of a psychiatric day center in Zurich. Former scientific publications concerned psychiatry, psychotherapy, and addiction research: see references and e-publications articles.
Further activities include:
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Development of the conceptual framework for a therapeutic community for drug dependent young people and its supervision over ten years.
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Supervision of several other therapeutic institutions and teams.
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For many years, board member in the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities, member of the editorial board of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment and of the German Journal System Familie.
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Teaching in advanced education for different institutions and coaching scientific theses in the areas of psychiatry and psychotherapy.
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Since 1997, active in private practice.
The paper was planned to be published by the UNDCP but caused by a change of management and funding there it did finally not happen. The author was already in private practice when the rights for publishing came back, thus the English paper in full size never was published. Up to now only a short version in German is officially available in a published form. In order to make the quite remarkable data and results accessible to researchers in this field the author decided for an e-publication of the original English paper on this home page. All further rights except for proper referencing are reserved by the author. If you activate the above English title, the publication will appear.
