By Sophie Hardach, Photo: Getty Images, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), March 7, 2023
Sebastian Schwerk lay awake at night, his mind racing. His father had recently died of leukaemia. Schwerk had been caring for him for months, together with his siblings, as well as looking after his own family. Now his mother needed care, too. His two older children were going through puberty. And he worried that with so much going on, his youngest son wasn't getting enough attention.
"All of those issues were causing me huge stress," recalls Schwerk, who is the creative director of a communications agency in Dresden, Germany. "And then my partner said to me: 'You do realise you have a right to a health retreat, don't you?'"
Germany is possibly the only country in the world where struggling parents are legally entitled to a "Kur", a health retreat of about three weeks, every four years. A Kur is prescribed by a doctor, and mostly funded by insurance. Meals, childcare and therapies are all included. Crucially, the retreat can be done not just to treat a health problem but also as a preventative measure to stop relatively mild problems from ballooning into worse ones.
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