Through the process of dehospitalisation, the number of in-patient beds in all psychiatric hospitals in the western part of the world has been reduced to 10-20% of those at the beginning of the 20th century. Though outpatient services have expanded to a high degree, the main burden of the psychosocial treatment still fell upon relatives. Most of these nursing families were poorly informed regarding their new duties. Thus many families were overstrained and not able to fulfill their function as ”co-therapists

Because of the prevalence of overstrained families with dysfunctional behaviour, the EE-concept was developed in the sixties (Brown et al 1964). Through family therapeutic interventions, relatives were systematically educated and integrated into long term rehabilitation concepts. In this way, the stigma of the ”HEE“- relatives was changed (Bebbington et al 1994; Schulze-Mönking 1994; Möller-Leimkühler 2008). In the meantime, the engagement of family members can be viewed as an important resource and not merely as a stress factor which is to be reduced (Pitschel-Walz, Bäuml et al 2001). In this context, psychoeducation is a very effective measure to inform family members of the background of the illness and the most important treatment elements. So they learn to have better communication with less stress and more helpful interactions. Through the establishment of a worldwide network, relatives are encouraged to cooperate with professionals and politicians to improve the living conditions of their patients. In this lecture, the historical background and actual findings concerning the empowerment of the relatives will be presented.