About Radio Peilsender

Radio Peilsender

Radio Peilsender is the patient radio of the Pfalzklinikum in Klingenmünster, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, the in-house station of the clinic for child and adolescent psychiatry, psychosomatics and psychotherapy. Since 2012, the station's patients have designed their own radio programme under the mottos "Nix gepeilt? Peilsender hören!" and "Wir können auch Radio!": the assertion that they can do radio, on a real frequency, for a real audience. It broadcasts on its own FM frequency 87.9 MHz around Klingenmünster and worldwide via the internet stream. The programme is made by patients for patients: a therapeutically and pedagogically valuable project that the children and adolescents embrace, run across professional groups with the participation of music therapy and the pedagogical-nursing service of the youth forensic ward.

Overview

Radio Peilsender broadcasts 24 hours a day on 87.9 MHz FM in the Klingenmünster area and as a web stream at 192 kbps, available worldwide. The music spans rock, pop and chill-out, and the programme is carried by the patients of the child and adolescent psychiatry clinic who plan, moderate and produce it themselves. The 24-hour operation means the station is always there: the night owl on the ward, the early riser, the homesick teenager at 3 am, all can find the familiar voices. A standing institution is the Sunday 9 am live broadcast of the clinic chaplaincy's church service from the clinic church, followed by Christian music; when no live service can take place, a recorded radio devotion is aired instead.

History

The Peilsender project began in 2012, when the patients of the Klinik für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie des Pfalzklinikums started designing their own radio programme. The name is a pun with a mission: "peilen" means to get it, to understand, and "Nix gepeilt?" asks the listener whether they have not quite got it, with the answer being to listen to the Peilsender. For a psychiatric clinic for children and adolescents, the radio project was conceived as part of a modern and transparent treatment: an attractive offer with therapeutic and pedagogical value, giving the young patients a voice, a task and an audience.

The Pfalzklinikum, the psychiatric hospital organisation of the Palatinate district association, is one of Germany's large psychiatric care providers, and its Klingenmünster site in the Southern Palatinate houses the child and adolescent psychiatry among its clinics. The patient radio belongs to a German hospital-radio tradition that goes back decades: the "Krankenhausfunk" stations that once broadcast into the wards via wired networks. The Peilsender modernises that tradition for the psychiatric context and the digital age: not background music for the wards, but a programme the patients make themselves, on a real FM frequency, with a worldwide stream.

The project is led across professional groups, with the music therapy department and the pedagogical-nursing service of the Station Jugend-Maßregelvollzug, the youth forensic ward, involved in its direction. That the forensic youth ward participates shows the project's reach: even the clinic's most restricted setting takes part in making radio. The youth forensic ward houses young offenders with psychiatric diagnoses, the patients with the fewest freedoms and the heaviest stigmas, and their participation in the Peilsender is a deliberate therapeutic choice: the microphone does not ask about the offence, only about the music, the moderation, the programme. The station gained its own FM frequency, 87.9 MHz, giving the patient programme a real terrestrial presence around Klingenmünster, and the web player extended it worldwide.

Programming

The programme is made by patients for patients: the children and adolescents of the clinic choose the music, moderate the shows and shape the content. The rock, pop and chill-out mix reflects the young producers' tastes, and the listener reviews tell the story of what the station means: former inpatients describe it as their absolute favourite during their stay, and keep listening from home after discharge, one writing that he had waited a long time for the station to be available at home. Another praises a moderator by name, the small recognition that means everything to a young person who has found a role. The Sunday church service broadcast at 9 am, live from the clinic church with the clinic chaplaincy, followed by Christian music, anchors the week's spiritual rhythm.

The therapeutic dimension is the programme's core: making radio demands planning, cooperation, technical learning and public speaking, all skills that the therapeutic process aims to build. The patients experience themselves as producers rather than cases, as voices rather than diagnoses. For adolescents in psychiatric treatment, whose lives are often defined by what they cannot do, the experience of running a real radio station, on a real frequency, heard by real listeners, is a powerful counter-narrative. The cross-professional leadership, music therapy plus the pedagogical-nursing service, embeds the radio work in the treatment concept rather than leaving it as a leisure activity: the moderation training is communication training, the programme planning is structure, the broadcast itself is exposure and self-efficacy.

Organization and Ownership

Radio Peilsender is the Haussender of the Pfalzklinikum, the Palatinate district's psychiatric hospital organisation, operated within the Klinik für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie, Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie in Klingenmünster. The project is led across professional groups with music therapy and the pedagogical-nursing service of the youth forensic ward participating. There is no commercial ownership; the station is a therapeutic project of the public clinic. The cross-professional leadership is itself a statement about modern psychiatric care: the therapists, the nurses, the educators and the young patients working together on a shared product, with the radio studio as the neutral ground where hierarchies soften and the patients' competence takes centre stage. The contact phone +06349 900 3791 connects to the station.

Digital Presence

The web player at peilsender-webplayer.funkhaus.online carries the 87.9 MHz programme worldwide, and the radio aggregators list the station as a 24/7 stream at 192 kbps. The clinic's website presents the project with its history and its current information, including the Sunday service broadcasts. For the former patients, the stream is the link back: the station they made during their stay remains available wherever they are, and the reviews show they use it. The young person who moderated the afternoon show from the clinic studio can listen to the same frequency from home, and the continuity matters: the discharge from the clinic does not have to mean the end of the voice they found there. The worldwide availability also opens the project to the outside: the families, the friends, the curious, anyone can hear what the young patients make.

Since 2012, Radio Peilsender has been the voice of the Pfalzklinikum's young patients: made by patients for patients, on 87.9 MHz around Klingenmünster and on the web stream worldwide, "Nix gepeilt? Peilsender hören!" It is the rare radio station where the audience and the makers are the same people, where the therapy and the programme are the same project, and where the Sunday church service, the rock mix and the young moderators' voices all belong to the same frequency: the patients' own, on air since 2012, and still broadcasting today, around the clock, for the patients and for the whole world, every single day, on 87.9 MHz and online alike, without ever once failing them all today either, truly.