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Welcome in Geel - A history of community mental health care
by Bert Boeckx & Geert Vandecruys (red.)
Ever since the thirteenth century, foster parents in the Belgian town of Geel adopt psychiatric patients and invite them to take part in the daily life of the family and the community. The patients get a chance to prove themselves as valuable members of society. This unique approach has fascinated experts around the world and, as a result, it has become the dominant approach in mental health care.
Welcome in Geel tells the history of community mental health care in this small town somewhere in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The book focuses on the first part of the twentieth century, when thousands of patients were sheltered in a town of only 15.000 inhabitants.
It offers a unique portrait of the psychiatric institute in Geel and of the life in foster families. The authors also zoom in on the international fame of Geel, the stories of hundreds of Dutchmen and a number of other remarkable foreigners. We get to see the daily life as well as the therapies and methods applied by doctors and nurses in the past. All of this results in a warm humane story with realistic and well documented images of the people who participate in this unique project.