Making a Case for the Geel Model: The American Experience with Family Care for Mental Patients

Community Mental Health Journal, Vol. 42, No. 3, June 2006 ( 2006)DOI: 10.1007/s10597-005-9029-0Making a Case for the Geel Model:

The American Experience with Family

Care for Mental PatientsNana Tuntiya, Ph.D.ABSTRACT: The historic colony for the mentally afflicted in Geel, Belgium is often

cited as a unique example of integrating patients into the community. However,

scholarly work on Geel largely ignores the history of similar programs that existed in

the United States. This study will look into the practice of family care modeled after the

Geel program in the 19th and 20th century U.S. The importance of this research is

twofold: it shows that the program is not new for the American context while at the

same time it informs about the logistics involved in initiating and running family care

programs in the U.S. milieu.KEY WORDS: Geel; deinstitutionalization; family care; mental health.The impetus for this article derives from the excellent work by J.L.

Goldstein and M. Godemont The legend and lessons of Geel, Belgium:

A 1500-year-old legend, a 21st-century model published in the October

2003 issue of Community Mental Health Journal. The article makes

a great contribution, especially in presenting the most recentNana Tuntiya is affiliated with the Department of Sociology, University of South Florida,

Tampa, FL.Address correspondence to Nana Tuntiya, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of South

Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, CPR 107, Tampa, FL 33620-5550, USA; e-mail: [email protected] 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.320 Community Mental Health Journaldevelopments in the Geel system, and providing testimony to how the

colony has been able to meet challenges of urbanization and other

changes within the local community, which Roosens (1979) had predicted earlier would eventually cause the demise of the Geel model.However, being a thorough and provocative analysis of the Geel

Colony, the above article is focused almost exclusively on the Belgian

experience with family care. Therefore, the history of the implementation of Geel-based plans in the United States in the 19th and 20th

century is not presented as part of the discussion on the potential use of

the program in this country. The importance of this information is

underscored by the possibility of studying this unique American

experience in combination with the Geel system itself, which might

significantly increase the value of this model as a...