Word: matheussen
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...seven families is responsible for the care of one or two men tal patients, and about 85% of the families who take in malades can truth fully say that their parents and grandparents did the same. "Here no one is afraid of mental patients," says Psychiatrist Herman Matheussen, 38, director of the program. When a schizophrenic plowing a field suddenly stops and begins gesticulating in a hallucinatory argument with an imaginary persecutor, his foster father may say calmly, "Joseph, why don't you finish that furrow...
...life, mostly nonviolent psychotics and people with subnormal intelligence. The carefully screened families who take them in receive a practical compensation: extra hands for simple work, plus stipends of 80? to $2 per day. "The first time they take a patient they are doing it for economic reasons," says Matheussen, "but after five or six years, it becomes an act of humanity...
Gentle Rhythm. Patience, understanding and the gentle rhythm of life have been almost the only real treatment at Geel. Now Matheussen is planning to set up several neighborhood treatment centers where patients will meet regularly for group therapy, schooling and vocational training. This additional therapy may be crucial to Geel's survival because modern life is at last changing the town's stable, close-knit medieval patterns. Factory jobs are replacing the farm work that is suitable for many patients. Trucks and cars thunder through the square, their drivers not accustomed to watching for dazed people who forget...
...these intensive-treatment neighborhood centers may mean that more patients will recover, so that families will be required to surrender their charges. That will present Matheussen with a special problem of diplomacy, since many do not want to let their boarders go. "Families adjust," he sighs. "They get attached to their patients...
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