While Prime Minister Michel Barnier is visiting Poitiers on Thursday to talk about mental health, the major national cause of the year 2025, the psychiatric sector is sinking into crisis with a shortage of personnel and resources.
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Behind its large white gates, the Edouard-Toulouse hospital center is the only establishment in Marseille to care for psychiatric patients from the northern districts, who are among the poorest in France. But despite the glaring needs, an admission unit will soon close its doors there, due to the recent departure of a psychiatrist.
“We are going to close twelve beds. What are we going to do with the patients who need care and are waiting?”asks Yasmina, night nurse in the unit concerned. She warns of the risks of seeing patients staying outside: “We have the example of a gentleman who put his mattress in front of the hospital and slept in front of the hospital last night. That means ‘I need to be hospitalized, I’m not well’. But as it’s not the worst, we’re going to postpone the emergency”she explains. “If we don’t exist, patients get worse and worse and patients who get worse, in the case of a schizophrenic, generally, he will blame himself, adds Yasmina.
“There are schizophrenic patients who end up being afraid of others. And to defend themselves, they take a knife and they ‘plant’.”
Yasmina, nurse at the Edouard-Toulouse psychiatric hospitalat franceinfo
The closure of psychiatric beds endangers patients, caregivers, but also society, insists Kader Benayed, from the Sud-Santé union at the Edouard-Toulouse hospital. “Today, it has become a time bomb because we are releasing unstabilized patients to bring in patients who are more in crisis, he warns. We shift the problems and today, it has a lot of repercussions in news stories. I can tell you that I’m afraid for my city.”
For its part, management assures that the closure of beds is only temporary, while it takes time to recruit doctors in the unit concerned. The situation has become untenable, with only five psychiatrists in place, when 12 are needed. “We can no longer cope”confides the head of the North Littoral pole of Edouard-Toulouse. There is no other choice, explains Thierry Acquier, the hospital director. “We cannot keep a service open without a doctor, he confirms. It’s impossible in psychiatry, particularly in the northern districts, which often have somewhat difficult patients.”
Increasingly difficult patients, even affirms Yasmina, for whom psychiatry is only the mirror of the deterioration of living conditions in these neighborhoods. “We are paying for the impoverishment of neighborhoods. We have been asking for a bonus for years to attract caregivers.” A specific bonus for caregivers in difficult sectors: the request is supported by hospital management, but until now there has never been a political response.