In France, the alarming state of the mental health and psychiatry sector
For two days, on September 27 and 28, 2021, the mental health and psychiatry sector, strongly affected by the health crisis, meets and discusses.
© CC0 Pixabay / Gerd Altmann
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
In France, after a year and a half of health crisis, the mental health and psychiatry sector is anxiously watching the announcements of the Head of State which will be made this Tuesday at the end of the meeting long promised by Emmanuel Macron.
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The Covid-19 epidemic has put a spotlight on the mental disorders from which more than 12 million French people currently suffer.
Isolation, anxieties, intra-family violence in the privacy of confinements have also been the detonators of
new suffering
.
The crisis has also cast a harsh light on the state of dilapidation of the psychiatric sector and the observation is as precise as an X-ray of what its professionals are going through: psychiatry in France is on the verge of implosion.
“
It is enough to try to make an appointment with a psychiatrist or a psychologist to realize the difficulties,
points out the psychiatrist Thierry Najman.
There are some hospital services where it sometimes takes more than a year, even in the Paris region, to get an appointment.
And when you want to hospitalize a loved one, you can quickly realize that the difficulties can be particularly significant.
"
Leakage of nursing staff
Today, in the hospital, 30% of positions are unfilled and 20% of interns' positions are deserted. In hospital wards where there were ten psychiatrists, there is only one. "
I believe that we have probably exceeded a certain threshold now since the state of certain hospital services is so serious that it is now scaring away doctors, nurses and psychologists,"
assures Thierry Najman.
And I believe that here we see that the situation has reached an important milestone since indeed services are emptying of their professionals, services see their beds sometimes disappear as was reported in a psychiatric hospital in northern France. And so, the situation
self-aggravates so much that she has reached major difficulties. "
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To read also: The mental health of the French has clearly deteriorated with the health crisis
Emmanuel Macron had made a promise of these meetings, the Ministry of Solidarity and Health even evoking a "
historic moment
".
The postponement of the event from June to September only increased expectations.
Professionals are now hoping for announcements at the end of the two days of debates, such as reimbursement for consultations with psychologists.
Above all, they hope that an emergency plan will come to the aid of a totally disaster-stricken public psychiatry.
With beds closed by the tens of thousands in recent decades and chronic underfunding, the task is immense.
* Author of the book
Place of Asylum Manifesto for another psychiatry
published by Odile Jacob
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