Robert Chesal
02-09-2011

Psychiatrist Herman van Praag does not believe any crime was committed at the St Joseph mental institute for boys in the Dutch town of Heel. A criminal investigation was launched after it was revealed that the number of fatalities among teenage boys at the home was abnormally high in the early 1950s. However, the boys’ death certificates do not indicate foul play.

“Like any well-intentioned person, the first thing I would think is that an infectious disease caused a number of unfortunate victims. I would not be inclined to seek any criminal intent behind the deaths.” Dr Van Praag sounds slightly defensive over the phone. The 81-year-old psychiatrist is renowned at home and abroad as one of the founders of biological psychiatry.

Inhumane therapy
Van Praag has often had to defend psychiatry during his career. In the 1970s and 1980s, his specialism frequently came under fire. Biological psychiatry was criticised for ignoring the feelings and motivation of patients and focusing exclusively on pathological processes in the brain. This, critics said, led to inhumane therapies. “Rumours that imply criminal activity have always struck the wrong key with me,“ Dr Van Praag says.

According to the death certificates, the high number of fatalities at the boys’ home were due to infectious diseases, birth defects, cancer and heart disease. Nevertheless, the Public Prosecution Office has not completed its investigation into the matter, nor has it withdrawn its comments about having “suspicions of crime”.

So the rumours continue about the deaths of 34 boys and also 40 girls at the nearby in St Anna mental institute for girls. The two Roman Catholic homes in Limburg housed mentally disabled children and young people with a whole range of psychiatric disorders.

Medical experiments
There have been various media reports voicing suspicions that lobotomies were carried out at the boys’ home. In the early 1950s, psychiatric patients in several countries were treated by having the frontal lobe of the brain partially severed by surgery. The operation often went wrong and resulted in death. But it is not known how often this happened in the Netherlands, let alone at the boys’ home. “I would find that highly surprising,” Van Praag comments.

There is also speculation that illegal medical experiments were carried out and experimental drugs used. Dr Van Praag: “I have never heard of the unethical use of research procedures in the Netherlands. I have also never heard of experimentation with medicines in Heel which could not stand up to scrutiny.”

Evil intent
Since the 1960s, Van Praag has contributed a great deal to our knowledge of psychopharmaceuticals, drugs which act upon the human mind. These were not available to psychiatric hospitals until the mid-1950s, and before then certain patients were treated unethically. Van Praag: “Electroshock therapy was completely irresponsible but there was no evil intent behind it, nurses just didn’t have anything else to offer.”

Dangerous patients
Dutch mental institutions in the 1950s were understaffed and had to deal with increasing numbers of aggressive patients. This was also the case in homes like St Joseph’s and St Anna’s in Heel, according to a scientific study on mental healthcare in Limburg by Annemieke Klijn.

Dr Van Praag: “I don’t know about the Netherlands, but in America shock therapy was used as a kind of punishment. Not because the nursing staff were sadists, but because some patients were dangerous. Something had to be done and that led to the use of straightjackets and other measures we would find undesirable nowadays.”

Anti-religious tone
Besides his criticism of stories which imply foul play, Herman Van Praag says the debate about the children’s homes in Heel leaves a nasty aftertaste. “The stories feed into the whole atmosphere surrounding the sexual assault by priests in the Roman Catholic church. That is unfortunate. The discussion has an anti-religious undertone I don’t like.”