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链接:http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/the-town-where-the-mentally-ill-get-a-warm-welcome/
字数: 2,800字

(1)The Geel question
For centuries, a little Belgian town has treated the mentally ill. Why are its medieval methods so successful?
Half an hour on the slow train from Antwerp, surrounded by flat, sparsely populated farmlands, Geel (pronounced, roughly, ‘Hyale’) strikes the visitor as a quiet, tidy but otherwise unremarkable Belgian market town. Yet its story is unique. For more than 700 years its inhabitants have taken the mentally ill and disabled into their homes as guests or ‘boarders’. At times, these guests have numbered in the thousands, and arrived from all over Europe. There are several hundred in residence today, sharing their lives with their host families for years, decades or even a lifetime. One boarder recently celebrated 50 years in the Flemish town, arranging a surprise party at the family home. Friends and neighbours were joined by the mayor and a full brass band.
(2)Among the people of Geel, the term ‘mentally ill’ is never heard: even words such as ‘psychiatric’ and ‘patient’ are carefully hedged with finger-waggling and scare quotes. The family care system, as it’s known, is resolutely non-medical. When boarders meet their new families, they do so, as they always have, without a backstory or clinical diagnosis. If a word is needed to describe them, it’s often a positive one such as ‘special’, or at worst, ‘different’. This might in fact be more accurate than ‘mentally ill’, since the boarders have always included some who would today be diagnosed with learning difficulties or special needs. But the most common collective term is simply ‘boarders’, which defines them at the most pragmatic level by their social, not mental, condition. These are people who, whatever their diagnosis, have come here because they’re unable to cope on their own, and because they have no family or friends who can look after them.
(3)The origins of the Geel story lie in the 13th century, in the martyrdom of Saint Dymphna, a legendary seventh-century Irish princess whose pagan father went mad with grief after the death of his Christian wife and demanded that Dymphna marry him. To escape the king’s incestuous passion, Dymphna fled to Europe and holed up in the marshy flatlands of Flanders. Her father finally tracked her down in Geel, and when she refused him once more, he beheaded her. Over time, she became revered as a saint with powers of intercession for the mentally afflicted, and her shrine attracted pilgrims and tales of miraculous cures.
(4)In 1349, a church was built on the outskirts of the town around Saint Dymphna’s memorial, and in 1480 a dormitory annex was added to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims. When the stream of visitors overflowed the allotted space, townspeople started to house them in their homes, farms and stables. During the Renaissance, Geel became famous as a place of sanctuary for the mad, who arrived and stayed for reasons both spiritual and opportunistic. Some pilgrims came in hope of a cure. In other cases, it seems that families from local villages took the chance to abandon troublesome relatives whom they couldn’t afford to keep. The people of Geel absorbed them all as an act of charity and Christian piety, but also put them to work as free labour on their farms.
(5)Today, the system continues along much the same lines. A boarder is treated as a member of the family: involved in everything, and particularly encouraged to form a strong bond with the children, a relationship that is seen as beneficial to both parties. The boarder’s conduct is expected to meet the same basic standards as everybody else’s, though it’s also understood that he or she might not have the same coping resources as others. Odd behaviour is ignored where possible, and when necessary dealt with discreetly. Those who meet these standards are ‘good’; others can be described as ‘difficult’, but never ‘bad’, ‘dumb’ or ‘crazy’. Boarders who are unable to cope on this basis will be readmitted to the hospital: this is inevitably seen as a punishment, and everyone hopes the stay ‘inside’ will be as brief as possible.
(6)The people of Geel don’t regard any of this as therapy: it’s simply ‘family care’. But throughout the town’s long history, many both inside and outside the psychiatric profession have wondered whether this is not only a form of therapy in itself, but perhaps the best form there is. However we might categorise or diagnose their conditions, and whatever we believe their cause to be — whether genetics or childhood trauma or brain chemistry or modern society — the ‘mentally ill’ are in practice those 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. If these ties can be remade so that the individual is reintegrated with the collective, doesn’t ‘family care’ amount to therapy? Even, perhaps, the closest we can approach to an actual cure?
(7)Modern psychiatry was born in the 19th century, and for the first generation of psychiatrists, ‘the Geel question’ was central to the revolution they were attempting to bring about. For many, the system was a dismal relic of the Middle Ages, where the mad were condemned to a life of drudgery and neglect under the lax oversight of the Church. Shut away from the modern world in quasi-feudal isolation, they were denied the benefits of new medical expertise, and with it, any chance of proper treatment.
(8)For others, however, Geel was a beacon of the progressive ideas that came to be known as ‘moral management’. Freeing the insane from their chains and madhouses, providing them with fresh air, occupational therapies and the chance to patch themselves back into normal life — this was treatment in itself. Philippe Pinel, the founding father of French psychiatry who was legendary for ‘striking the chains off the mad’ at the Salpetrière asylum in Paris, declared that ‘the farmers of Geel are arguably the most competent doctors; they are an example of what may turn out to be the only reasonable treatment of insanity and what doctors from the outset should regard as ideal’. His student Jean-Étienne Esquirol, who became the next generation’s leading reformer of mental hospitals, visited Geel in 1821 and was astonished by the sight of hundreds of lunatics wandering freely and calmly around the town and countryside. He praised the tolerance of a system where ‘the mad are elevated to the dignity of the sick’.
(9)The ‘Geel question’ has remained at the heart of psychiatry, and the pendulum continues to swing between these polarised views. In 1850, Belgium integrated Geel into a new state dispensation that combined elements of both perspectives. Oversight of the family care system was transferred from church to government. Families got a modest state payment, in return for which they had to submit to inspection and regulation by the medical authorities. Under the church system, any crimes committed by a boarder had been the responsibility of families, who sometimes resorted to chaining and beating boarders who were violent or difficult to control. Under the new rules, however, restraint and corporal punishment were banned. And in 1861, a hospital appeared on the outskirts of town: a two-storey building with an elegant portico and large arched windows, designed in every detail to resemble a country mansion rather than a prison. Boarders, arriving now as wards of state, came here to be assessed before taking up their lodgings in town.
(10)Medical supervision brought great improvements, but the directors of the new hospital insisted that it should supplement rather than replace the unique regime of family care. In the terminology still used by boarders and townspeople today, ‘inside’ — the world of the hospital — was a resource to use sparingly, and ‘outside’ — the wider community — was preferred wherever possible. For routine supervision, boarders were required to attend one of three bathhouses at least once a week: ostensibly for hygiene but also for more general health checks, as well as a chance for a conversation with someone outside the family sphere. The fact that these checks could be performed ‘outside’ rather than ‘inside’ meant that, for most boarders, the smell of the hospital and the sight of asylum wards vanished from their lives.
(11)The reformed system became a source of great professional and local pride. Doctors and psychiatrists from across Europe and America came on fact-finding missions. Dozens of towns in Belgium, France and Germany established their own versions of the ‘Geel system’, some of which still survive. In 1902, the International Congress of Psychiatry officially settled the ‘Geel question’, declaring it an example of best practice to be emulated wherever possible.
(12)Throughout the 20th century, the family care system prospered and expanded, and the town’s fame spread. With the growth of state asylums, families across Belgium faced the choice of having their relatives ‘put away’ for life in grim institutions or sending them to Geel, where handsome promotional photographs and brochures showed them working the fields, attending harvest festivals and church services, and sleeping in regularly inspected private bedrooms with cots and linen sheets. As a result, so many boarders arrived from the Netherlands that their hosts built a Protestant church in town for them. One wealthy family even took in a Polish prince, who came with his own butler and carriage.
(13)By the late 1930s, there were almost 4,000 boarders among a native population of 16,000. Across Belgium, the town became famous for its eccentricity and was often the butt of coarse humour (‘Half of Geel is crazy, and the rest is half crazy!’), but in the town itself, normal life was little affected. Local jokes tended to revolve around how frequently locals and boarders were confused, and how hard it was to tell the difference. Boarders were well aware that disruptive public behaviour might result in being sent back ‘inside’; the problem was more commonly the opposite, that they became overly timid for fear of drawing attention to themselves.
(14)In recent decades, the ‘two-layered system’ — family care supported by a medical safety net — has been constantly recalibrated to reflect developments in psychiatry, but its most abrupt shift came in the 1970s. As the asylums emptied, mental healthcare was reconceived to become more flexible and extend further into the community. Antipsychotic and antidepressant medications, central to the new treatment model, were initially resisted by many families who felt they would turn boarders into medical outpatients, but they rapidly proved indispensable in helping to manage the worst of the depressions, crises and public incidents.
(15)These all appear to have been changes for the better. Yet they coincided with a precipitous and perhaps terminal decline in the centuries-old system. Today, there are around 300 boarders in Geel: less than a tenth of its pre-war peak and falling fast. While many locals believe family care will endure, it has become a markedly smaller part of town life, and others suspect that this generation will be the last to maintain it. Why is this deeply rooted and universally praised system suddenly on the point of disappearing?
2014年08月15日 08点08分
1
字数: 2,800字

(1)The Geel questionFor centuries, a little Belgian town has treated the mentally ill. Why are its medieval methods so successful?
Half an hour on the slow train from Antwerp, surrounded by flat, sparsely populated farmlands, Geel (pronounced, roughly, ‘Hyale’) strikes the visitor as a quiet, tidy but otherwise unremarkable Belgian market town. Yet its story is unique. For more than 700 years its inhabitants have taken the mentally ill and disabled into their homes as guests or ‘boarders’. At times, these guests have numbered in the thousands, and arrived from all over Europe. There are several hundred in residence today, sharing their lives with their host families for years, decades or even a lifetime. One boarder recently celebrated 50 years in the Flemish town, arranging a surprise party at the family home. Friends and neighbours were joined by the mayor and a full brass band.
(2)Among the people of Geel, the term ‘mentally ill’ is never heard: even words such as ‘psychiatric’ and ‘patient’ are carefully hedged with finger-waggling and scare quotes. The family care system, as it’s known, is resolutely non-medical. When boarders meet their new families, they do so, as they always have, without a backstory or clinical diagnosis. If a word is needed to describe them, it’s often a positive one such as ‘special’, or at worst, ‘different’. This might in fact be more accurate than ‘mentally ill’, since the boarders have always included some who would today be diagnosed with learning difficulties or special needs. But the most common collective term is simply ‘boarders’, which defines them at the most pragmatic level by their social, not mental, condition. These are people who, whatever their diagnosis, have come here because they’re unable to cope on their own, and because they have no family or friends who can look after them.
(3)The origins of the Geel story lie in the 13th century, in the martyrdom of Saint Dymphna, a legendary seventh-century Irish princess whose pagan father went mad with grief after the death of his Christian wife and demanded that Dymphna marry him. To escape the king’s incestuous passion, Dymphna fled to Europe and holed up in the marshy flatlands of Flanders. Her father finally tracked her down in Geel, and when she refused him once more, he beheaded her. Over time, she became revered as a saint with powers of intercession for the mentally afflicted, and her shrine attracted pilgrims and tales of miraculous cures.
(4)In 1349, a church was built on the outskirts of the town around Saint Dymphna’s memorial, and in 1480 a dormitory annex was added to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims. When the stream of visitors overflowed the allotted space, townspeople started to house them in their homes, farms and stables. During the Renaissance, Geel became famous as a place of sanctuary for the mad, who arrived and stayed for reasons both spiritual and opportunistic. Some pilgrims came in hope of a cure. In other cases, it seems that families from local villages took the chance to abandon troublesome relatives whom they couldn’t afford to keep. The people of Geel absorbed them all as an act of charity and Christian piety, but also put them to work as free labour on their farms.
(5)Today, the system continues along much the same lines. A boarder is treated as a member of the family: involved in everything, and particularly encouraged to form a strong bond with the children, a relationship that is seen as beneficial to both parties. The boarder’s conduct is expected to meet the same basic standards as everybody else’s, though it’s also understood that he or she might not have the same coping resources as others. Odd behaviour is ignored where possible, and when necessary dealt with discreetly. Those who meet these standards are ‘good’; others can be described as ‘difficult’, but never ‘bad’, ‘dumb’ or ‘crazy’. Boarders who are unable to cope on this basis will be readmitted to the hospital: this is inevitably seen as a punishment, and everyone hopes the stay ‘inside’ will be as brief as possible.
(6)The people of Geel don’t regard any of this as therapy: it’s simply ‘family care’. But throughout the town’s long history, many both inside and outside the psychiatric profession have wondered whether this is not only a form of therapy in itself, but perhaps the best form there is. However we might categorise or diagnose their conditions, and whatever we believe their cause to be — whether genetics or childhood trauma or brain chemistry or modern society — the ‘mentally ill’ are in practice those 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. If these ties can be remade so that the individual is reintegrated with the collective, doesn’t ‘family care’ amount to therapy? Even, perhaps, the closest we can approach to an actual cure?
(7)Modern psychiatry was born in the 19th century, and for the first generation of psychiatrists, ‘the Geel question’ was central to the revolution they were attempting to bring about. For many, the system was a dismal relic of the Middle Ages, where the mad were condemned to a life of drudgery and neglect under the lax oversight of the Church. Shut away from the modern world in quasi-feudal isolation, they were denied the benefits of new medical expertise, and with it, any chance of proper treatment.
(8)For others, however, Geel was a beacon of the progressive ideas that came to be known as ‘moral management’. Freeing the insane from their chains and madhouses, providing them with fresh air, occupational therapies and the chance to patch themselves back into normal life — this was treatment in itself. Philippe Pinel, the founding father of French psychiatry who was legendary for ‘striking the chains off the mad’ at the Salpetrière asylum in Paris, declared that ‘the farmers of Geel are arguably the most competent doctors; they are an example of what may turn out to be the only reasonable treatment of insanity and what doctors from the outset should regard as ideal’. His student Jean-Étienne Esquirol, who became the next generation’s leading reformer of mental hospitals, visited Geel in 1821 and was astonished by the sight of hundreds of lunatics wandering freely and calmly around the town and countryside. He praised the tolerance of a system where ‘the mad are elevated to the dignity of the sick’.
(9)The ‘Geel question’ has remained at the heart of psychiatry, and the pendulum continues to swing between these polarised views. In 1850, Belgium integrated Geel into a new state dispensation that combined elements of both perspectives. Oversight of the family care system was transferred from church to government. Families got a modest state payment, in return for which they had to submit to inspection and regulation by the medical authorities. Under the church system, any crimes committed by a boarder had been the responsibility of families, who sometimes resorted to chaining and beating boarders who were violent or difficult to control. Under the new rules, however, restraint and corporal punishment were banned. And in 1861, a hospital appeared on the outskirts of town: a two-storey building with an elegant portico and large arched windows, designed in every detail to resemble a country mansion rather than a prison. Boarders, arriving now as wards of state, came here to be assessed before taking up their lodgings in town.
(10)Medical supervision brought great improvements, but the directors of the new hospital insisted that it should supplement rather than replace the unique regime of family care. In the terminology still used by boarders and townspeople today, ‘inside’ — the world of the hospital — was a resource to use sparingly, and ‘outside’ — the wider community — was preferred wherever possible. For routine supervision, boarders were required to attend one of three bathhouses at least once a week: ostensibly for hygiene but also for more general health checks, as well as a chance for a conversation with someone outside the family sphere. The fact that these checks could be performed ‘outside’ rather than ‘inside’ meant that, for most boarders, the smell of the hospital and the sight of asylum wards vanished from their lives.
(11)The reformed system became a source of great professional and local pride. Doctors and psychiatrists from across Europe and America came on fact-finding missions. Dozens of towns in Belgium, France and Germany established their own versions of the ‘Geel system’, some of which still survive. In 1902, the International Congress of Psychiatry officially settled the ‘Geel question’, declaring it an example of best practice to be emulated wherever possible.
(12)Throughout the 20th century, the family care system prospered and expanded, and the town’s fame spread. With the growth of state asylums, families across Belgium faced the choice of having their relatives ‘put away’ for life in grim institutions or sending them to Geel, where handsome promotional photographs and brochures showed them working the fields, attending harvest festivals and church services, and sleeping in regularly inspected private bedrooms with cots and linen sheets. As a result, so many boarders arrived from the Netherlands that their hosts built a Protestant church in town for them. One wealthy family even took in a Polish prince, who came with his own butler and carriage.
(13)By the late 1930s, there were almost 4,000 boarders among a native population of 16,000. Across Belgium, the town became famous for its eccentricity and was often the butt of coarse humour (‘Half of Geel is crazy, and the rest is half crazy!’), but in the town itself, normal life was little affected. Local jokes tended to revolve around how frequently locals and boarders were confused, and how hard it was to tell the difference. Boarders were well aware that disruptive public behaviour might result in being sent back ‘inside’; the problem was more commonly the opposite, that they became overly timid for fear of drawing attention to themselves.
(14)In recent decades, the ‘two-layered system’ — family care supported by a medical safety net — has been constantly recalibrated to reflect developments in psychiatry, but its most abrupt shift came in the 1970s. As the asylums emptied, mental healthcare was reconceived to become more flexible and extend further into the community. Antipsychotic and antidepressant medications, central to the new treatment model, were initially resisted by many families who felt they would turn boarders into medical outpatients, but they rapidly proved indispensable in helping to manage the worst of the depressions, crises and public incidents.
(15)These all appear to have been changes for the better. Yet they coincided with a precipitous and perhaps terminal decline in the centuries-old system. Today, there are around 300 boarders in Geel: less than a tenth of its pre-war peak and falling fast. While many locals believe family care will endure, it has become a markedly smaller part of town life, and others suspect that this generation will be the last to maintain it. Why is this deeply rooted and universally praised system suddenly on the point of disappearing?