2024-01-18 09:00:07
As the mother of a son who has been treated in psychiatry for over twenty years and an active member of concerned family associations, the debate sparked by the accusation of “laxity” directed against psychiatry, following bloody news items, makes me react strongly. “France is the country which holds the record for forced hospitalizations”respond officials, and this statement is unfortunately true, which we should rather deplore.
People with severe mental illnesses – around 3 million in France – do not spontaneously seek care, at least during an initial period of their chronic illness, sometimes for several years. Most often, it is their relatives who contact the psychiatric services, but they ask that the sick person come themselves to the medical-psychological center (CMP) in their neighborhood. Most of the time, when she’s feeling bad, she doesn’t want to go.
We must therefore wait until the situation, which the loved ones are worried about, becomes untenable for services to intervene – not the psychiatric services but the police or firefighters if they recognize themselves as competent. This requires endangerment or an infraction. By then, several weeks, months, or even years may have passed since the first alert. There « crisis » then becomes a ” emergency “which alone is considered by psychiatric services as justifying hospitalization of the patient.
Questions about the missions of psychiatry
This procedure is, in fact, the only one in force in France to provide care to a mentally ill person who does not recognize their illness. Involuntary hospitalization is too often the gateway to psychiatric care. When the patient leaves the hospital and returns to live in his home or with his loved ones, he is not alone, he has his prescription, on which the medications he must take are written.
Has he understood that he is ill, does he accept to recognize himself as such and that he must take care of himself so as not to relapse? That is not the question according to the hospital: his bed must be freed and he has an appointment at the CMP a month later. Will he go there? How long will he take his treatment? Relapses are frequent and they result in a new forced hospitalization, a return to “square one”. It is therefore not surprising that this type of hospitalization is very common in France. Does this mean that psychiatry has fulfilled its missions?
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