When the Covid-19 epidemic impacts the mental health sector
Audio 02:35
According to a study, because of Covid-19 and the restrictions associated with it, 20% of French people are starting to switch to psychiatry.
© CC0 Pixabay / Gerd Altmann
By: Laurence Théault
6 min
The Covid-19 epidemic and the health restrictions that accompany it are starting to affect the psychological resources of the French.
Psychiatric services have been particularly in demand for several weeks.
The health crisis and confinement have consequences for patients with mental illnesses, but also for the elderly, young people and professionals most affected by the crisis.
Report in the medico-psychological center of Montreuil.
Publicity
The waiting room is strangely empty.
Only a lady, chin tucked in and gaze lost, mumbles continuously, in the middle of an episode of delirium.
She will be hospitalized.
Then will come a young woman with meadow green eyes highlighted between her cap and her dark fabric mask.
This is the second time that she comes to consult at the medico-psychological center of Montreuil.
“
I separated from my partner during confinement.
Because of this crisis situation, the separation, but also all the traumas that the confinement may have caused, the fear of the pandemic…
”, she explains.
Among the symptoms felt, she evokes “
this kind of interior mass which pushes the walls of the body which causes something to crack that has been solidified on us.
Something totally wrong in fact…
”She will leave the center with a prescription for drugs issued for a month.
► Read also: Mental health, the first effects of the health crisis are being felt
A "new" audience
The psychiatrist Eugenia Mascarenhas wears mountain shoes, useful for surveying the arid terrain of psychiatry, the head of the pole in Ville-Evrard explains that psychiatrists and nurses welcome an audience he was not used to receiving.
“
What we see a lot is this increase in people in a situation of intra-family conflicts because they have been confined and conflicts break out, a lot of people who have found themselves unemployed, a lot of people who are in a situation of extreme social difficulties that end up on the streets.
"
Depression, dismay, anger ....
According to a study
, because of Covid-19 and the restrictions associated with it, 20% of French people are starting to switch to psychiatry.
Added to this is the monitoring of people suffering from psychiatric disorders.
“
People who were more or less stabilized who arrived with life, work and activities managed to support themselves and keep them functioning.
The Covid-19 has damaged this functioning and they decompensate,
”explains psychiatrist Ines Maalej.
A sector already in crisis
The health crisis is weakening the psychiatric sector, already in great pain.
"
We have several patients who stay in the emergency room while waiting for a place in a psychiatric hospital
", notes Eugenia Mascarenhas.
“
Our psychiatric hospitals are almost deserted at the medical level.
Working conditions have become so harsh that even those who are very invested and very dedicated find it very difficult to do their job.
Adding to this a health crisis which inflames psychiatric pathologies only worsens the situation
”, deplores Ines Maalej.
So suddenly, the idea comes to us to look at the psychological suffering of caregivers.
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