The Givat Shaul mental health center opened in 1951, utilizing the houses and school building of Deir Yassin, which had been left untouched. It was originally a therapeutic community of 300 patients who spent most of the day working outdoors. It was called the Kfar Shaul Government Work Village for Mental Patients.[4] In its early years, the majority of the patients were Holocaust survivors.[5] The hospital now suffers from severe overcrowding and has an average occupancy rate of 110 percent.[6]Udi Aloni, an Israeli director who made a film about the hospital, Forgiveness (2006), described it as dilapidated.[7]
The hospital is equipped with Snoezelen rooms, a Dutch therapy technique which uses controlled stimulation of the five senses to benefit the mentally and physically disabled.[8] Kfar Shaul is known in particular for its association with Jerusalem Syndrome, a condition in which the sufferer is gripped by religious delusions. The hospital sees some 50 patients a year who are diagnosed with the condition.[9] Israel psychologist Gregory Katz has said many of the patients are Pentecostals from rural parts of the United States and Scandinavia.[10] The syndrome was first diagnosed in 1993 by Yair Bar-El, a former director of the hospital.[9]
In 2000, archaeologists unearthed the remains of a winepress dated to the Byzantine or Roman era on the grounds of the hospital.[11]
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