Geel: Where The Mentally Ill Are Welcomed Home

This essay tells the story of a small town in Belgium, Geel, that has taken on a new approach on treating mental illness. Families living there take in their home a mentally ill person — although they don’t refer to them like that. They prefer the more positive-sounding word “special”, or the most common one, “boarders” — and just treat them as part of the family. They have been engaging in this family care more or less since the 15th century. The story goes that a few centuries earlier an Irish princess took refuge in this small town while trying to escape her father who, after having lost his wife, wanted to marry his daughter. He finally found her hiding place, beheaded her and, over time, she became a saint “with powers of intercession for the mentally afflicted, and her shrine attracted pilgrims and tales of miraculous cures”. The people of Geel started receiving pilgrims in their homes and some of them did free farm work.

Today, pretty much the same principles apply, meaning that a boarder is accepted in the home, involved in everything and encouraged to develop a relationship with the family’s children. They are not called names and they are not punished if they behave oddly.

The whole Geel approach seems to be focused on looking at the mentally ill as people “who have fallen through the net, who have broken the ties that bind the rest of us in our social contract, who are no longer able to connect”.

The author gives an overview of how psychiatric practices, and of how “the Geel question” changed with time. It also offers a very down-to-earth analysis of why the generation today may be the last one that maintains this type of family care.