Health: hospital psychiatrists mobilize against the “dilapidation” of the sector

Europe 1 with AFP 7:31 p.m., November 29, 2022

"Crying lack" of hospital beds, "regular closures" of medico-psychological centers for lack of sufficient staff: hospital psychiatrists were invited to mobilize on Tuesday against the "dilapidation" of the public mental health sector, according to their unions .

Four organizations have called for strikes and rallies, in Paris and in the regions.

Several dozen people gathered at the end of the morning in front of the Ministry of Health, where a delegation was received by the cabinet of François Braun.

"Abandonment of public psychiatry"

The unions denounce an "abandonment of public psychiatry" which "is characterized on a daily basis by the glaring lack of full hospital beds and regular closures of medico-psychological centers (CMP)".

A situation linked to the shortage of doctors and nurses, which "today affects five out of six hospitals", according to an inter-union press release.

Result: administrative tasks accumulate to the detriment of care, accuses Sylvie Barreteau.

"These conditions are exhausting on a daily basis", underlines the child psychiatrist.

>> READ ALSO

- A covid-skeptical psychiatrist and ex-MP summoned before the Regional Order of Physicians

“We no longer have the capacity to treat as we would like”, deplores Norbert Skurnik, president of the Intersyndicale for the defense of public psychiatry (Idepp).

According to the psychiatrist, for lack of reception, "in Île-de-France alone, 60 to 70,000 people, of whom at least 60% are mentally ill, wander outside any institution and any home".

The problem of job attractiveness

The specialty no longer appeals to young doctors, laments Dr. Skurnik, citing the figure of 100 interns to be distributed each year in the Paris region, "where 150 are needed".

"The number one problem is that of attractiveness", abounds Clément Vansteeme, a young hospital practitioner at Sainte-Anne in Paris, who "saw in a few years the quality of reception in psychiatric emergencies deteriorate".

To make the profession more attractive, the Union of Hospital Psychiatrists (SPH) is asking for a 25% increase in salaries "at each level of the grid", so that their remuneration is comparable to that of "other professions which engage their responsibility criminal".

The mental health plan announced in September 2021 by President Emmanuel Macron at the end of the psychiatry conference, with the creation of 800 nursing positions in the CMPs, is deemed largely insufficient.

"800 nurses is less than one per center ... and we haven't seen a single one arrive! Even the 'not many' are not realized", slips the president of the SPH, Marie-José Cortès .

Questioned in the National Assembly, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Minister Delegate for Health, assured that the government was "fully aware" of the difficulties of the sector, promising for the beginning of January a series of meetings between François Braun and the profession, with a view to of a "scale plan".

Unions of hospital psychiatrists await these interviews firmly.

"We do not want announcements, but concrete actions", warns Dr Cortès.