Aubervilliers (AFP)

"We close the door and we tell them later": at the Aubervilliers psychiatric hospital, the carers who will demonstrate on Friday denounce a "deterioration" in the care provided to patients, including in this suburban department where the needs are more important than elsewhere.

"The time for patients is over." In the corridors of this small Seine-Saint-Denis hospital, Maïté Augustin, a 33-year-old nurse, confesses her dismay. It lists: the "preparation of medicines", "the administrative tasks that did not exist before" and the staff that founds.

"Two years ago we had twelve nurses, plus four nursing assistants on the team," she said. Today, "we are only six, plus three" helpers.

Result: more time "to smoke a cigarette or drink coffee" with patients, or to talk to them, what it would take to "defuse crisis situations", adds the nurse. "We let them calm down themselves in the rooms. We close the door and tell them + see you later +".

Aubervilliers depends on the public mental health establishment of Ville-Evrard, which serves almost the entire department. Here, "50 nursing positions, 30 physician positions and 10 social workers are vacant," says psychiatrist Marie-Christine Beaucousin.

The posts are however "budgeted" but do not find takers, adds the pole manager, who is one of some 800 French practitioners who have resigned from their administrative and supervisory functions.

"How do you want it to be interesting?" Says Maïté Augustin. "We idealize this human profession", but "the administrative, the logistics" are gaining ground on "care". Without counting the "poverty pay". With six years of seniority, she earns 1,616 euros per month.

Friday, it will demonstrate alongside the Inter-Hospital Collective (CIH) which calls for "a significant increase in wages" and an additional 600 million euros this year "to stop the flight of staff".

- Heating failures -

"See, Olivier, he shouldn't be there," says Dr. Beaucousin on the threshold of an isolation room. Inside the small tiled room, a man in pajamas sits on a bed sealed on the floor.

"Yesterday he was anxious, he couldn't see a nurse and it went up, it went up," explains the doctor. She hopes to be able to reinstate him in a classic room this evening, "if there is one available".

In Aubervilliers, the 22 beds are 100% occupied. Many patients "have no other solution than being here", details the psychiatrist.

The 93 is sorely lacking in "reception centers, homes for living", all these medico-social structures which allow "to shorten hospitalization". A situation all the more problematic in the poorest department of metropolitan France: "precariousness generates mental disorders more easily", explains Doctor Beaucousin, for whom the territory should on the contrary be a "priority health zone".

Another peculiarity is the larger number of migrant populations. A public, there too, more often subject to psychological disorders, because of the traumas experienced in their migratory journey.

After a visit from the High Health Authority, which deemed the premises unworthy, budgets were released to renovate the building. In the meantime, the heating outages continued this winter.

"I had a bathrobe, a hoodie, two sweaters and two pants, but I couldn't sleep because of the cold," said a patient in his thirties. "It was 8 degrees at 6:00 p.m. in the room, so imagine in the middle of the night, the cold ..."

So far the caregivers are holding out, proud to work "on a field where we feel to be useful," says Dr. Beaucousin. Despite the "bricolage", "imagining solutions" in the face of difficulties, "it also makes the job interesting", assures Xavier Faye, health executive.

"Doing psychiatry in the 93 is not like doing in the 5th arrondissement," adds Marc Thomé, nurse. This is also what these caregivers want to show on Friday.

© 2020 AFP