Zoé Pallier, edited by Romain Rouillard 09:57, May 30, 2022

The psychiatric clinic of La Chesnaie, located near Blois in the Loir-et-Cher, is put up for sale by its owner.

In this establishment where patients participate in the life of the clinic, caregivers fear a takeover by a private group and have decided to create a cooperative. 

REPORTAGE

The official call for tenders will be published in the coming days.

The psychiatric clinic of La Chesnaie, near Blois, is now for sale.

The establishment, where 110 sick people from all over France stay, is one of the last bastions of institutional psychotherapy.

Patients are not confined there and even participate in the life of the clinic.

But with this change of owner, caregivers fear the arrival of a private group to the point of becoming buyers themselves, by creating a cooperative.

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It is a question of acquiring a vast domain composed of a castle with facades covered with Virginia creeper but also of a pink chalet and a park of more than 50 hectares bordered by fields and forest.

"There are no grids, people go from one place to another, meet other people. This creates discussions, it's done on purpose", describes Jean, a nurse.

But it also happens to the latter to keep the kitchen or to take care of the reception.

It is difficult in this clinic to distinguish caregivers from patients.

“Today, I am doing the cooking workshop with Anne-Laure”, can we hear in the establishment. 

"We know we have too much to lose" 

This operation is more than 60 years old and the employees fear seeing it disappear, unless they constitute themselves as future owners.

Hence the idea of ​​a cooperative, as Julia proudly explains.

"We said to ourselves that we were in the best position, we who know the system, to keep it intact. If we can't go all the way, maybe we can come across someone from well-intentioned who would listen to our advice... We can dream".

A hypothesis that makes Gwenaël, his psychologist colleague, smile.

"Even a willing buyer will in fact require higher profitability. And his logic is to pool positions, it's going to be a lot of things. We know that we have too much to lose, we employees, and the patients too," he said. 

Despite everything, the nursing team strongly believes in its chances of winning the call for tenders.

Especially since some say they are unable, after knowing this clinic, to return to other methods of care.