Ill-being: immersion in a unit listening to young people in distress

Games, color, drawings on the wall…In a crisis unit, everything is done so that young people forget their dark thoughts. The teenagers present have tried to end their lives and are not immune to a recurrence. Isolated from the world and their family, they will try to calm their anxiety. “We have to show them that life is not just about being unwell”explains Camilla Caufapenurse.

For Diane, mealtime is a battle against herself. She is 17 years old and staying for the second time in the unit. “We don’t have a belt, we don’t have anything. It’s to protect me, so that I don’t hurt myself”says the girl. In this unit, 230 teenagers were taken care of last year, almost twice as many as five years ago. Here, they learn to put their discomfort into words. School pressure and confinement often return. “We have never experienced this”says Professor Ludovic Gicquel. Among the teenagers followed, the number of recurrences was divided by three.