Paris (AFP)

Faced with the "catastrophic care" of patients in mental health, two MPs call for "finally out of hospital psychiatry" by "redeploying 80%" of the staff of this sector "on the brink of implosion" to the city ​​"by 2030", in a report unveiled Wednesday.

"Delay in diagnosis far too important", "over-occupancy of beds" of psychiatry representing a "plague for patients as for caregivers", increasing recourse "to hospitalization without consent" ... The territorial organization of the psychiatry is "both inefficient and ineffective", say Martine Wonner (LREM) and Caroline Fiat (LFI), rapporteurs of an information mission on the subject.

Before becoming MPs, Martine Wonner was a psychiatrist, Caroline Fiat a caregiver in an Ehpad.

"The number of psychiatric hospital beds per capita has halved since the 1990s," say MEPs. But the structures that have developed parallel in the city "do not meet the growing demand" of care, the centers medicalopsychological (CMP) being "everywhere saturated" while "the first appointment with a psychiatrist can reach three months , and sometimes much more. "

As a result, "the patients have no other solution than the emergencies, then to be hospitalized, whereas the crisis could have been avoided".

"If the demands of hospital staff", illustrated by several strikes since last year (Amiens, Rouen, Le Havre, etc ...), "in favor of more beds are perfectly understandable (...) the answer does not is not in the hospital but outside, "they judge.

"It is urgent to deploy significant resources on non-hospital structures, whether health, social or medico-social", they argue, advocating for "the massive development of mobile teams throughout the territory but also upstream and downstream structures ".

"After ten years, the objective (...) should be to deploy 80% of the means of the psychiatric hospital on the outpatient".

The deputies also propose the creation of a "national agency in charge of mental health policies" modeled on the National Cancer Institute.

In response to the crisis in the sector, Health Minister Agnès Buzyn in April had appointed Professor Frank Bellivier Ministerial Delegate for Mental Health and Psychiatry, when MPs want "interdepartmental steering".

The draft Social Security budget for 2020 should also begin the "overhaul" of funding for psychiatry.

© 2019 AFP