Psychiatry: professionals denounce failing care - Headlines

2023-07-21 13:37:00

July 21, 2023

While psychiatric disorders have increased, particularly among young people after the Covid-19 crisis, healthcare personnel frequently denounce a lack of human and material resources to treat patients with dignity. About fifty caregivers sign this Friday, a forum in the Parisian.

“Psychiatric constraint, restraints and isolation are not care”. In a column published on Friday July 21 in Le Parisien, around fifty psychiatrists, psychologists and patients warn about psychiatric care in France. “Should we continue to accept the tenfold increase in institutional violence, the non-reception, the transformation of many care services into a veritable machine for crushing sick people and those who take care of them? », they ask. The signatories denounce reception centers for children and adults ” overflowing “, a situation in which any prevention would be rendered impossible.

They denounce normally exceptional practices that are becoming the norm, such as restraint, isolation and hospitalization without consent. If this or that other decision is made, “It is then a heavy measure which should always be accompanied by psychological assistance and – in no case – replace it. If this is not the case, these practices amount to mistreatment”.

Repeating alerts

Thus they plead to put the patient and his relatives back at the center of care and give them the right to speak during “of medial and administrative decisions taken within the walls”. The authors of the op-ed also ask “a questioning of the culture of hindrance and confinement” and denounce “short-term support, and too often very brutal”. According to them, this system feeds a growing distrust of caregivers and ” generates unfathomable ethical suffering among professionals attentive to these issues”.

For years now, professionals have been alerting the public authorities to psychological care in France. On June 21, a group of young psychiatrists denounced the disintegration of psychiatric care in hospital services. “Our observation is that of a disaster-stricken psychiatry: ‘bed managers’ to compensate for the closure of 60% of beds since the 1980s (the primary objective of care now being to ‘get the patient out’), lack of training, dilapidated premises, lack of human and financial resources”. In March 2022, another forum of caregivers, in Le Parisien, challenged Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, “Let’s create jobs to avoid shipwreck!” ».

Mental health in numbers : according to the Ministry of Health, psychiatry represents 2.4 million people treated in health establishments. In France, in 2022, 3 million people will suffer from severe mental disorders. 15% of 10-20 year olds need follow-up or care and 7.5% of French people aged 15 to 85 have suffered from depression in the last 12 months. Each year mental disorders cost 19.3 billion euros to the health insurance.

Source : Le Parisien July 21, 2023, Le Monde June 21, 2023, Public Health France, Ministry of Health
Written by : Dorothée Duchemin – Edited by Emmanuel Ducreuzet