“In Nantes, there is more than a year of waiting to be hospitalized in child psychiatry”, denounces the doctor Philippe Bizouarn

“In Nantes, there is more than a year of waiting to be hospitalized in child psychiatry“, denounces Friday July 21 on franceinfo Philippe Bizouarn, intensive care doctor at the Nantes University Hospital, father of a child who was interned in psychiatry and signatory of a forum published Friday in Le Parisien on too often failing care of patients in psychiatry.

>>> Lack of means, training, staff… Faced with violence in psychiatry, poor caregivers

franceinfo: We can read in this forum that “When madness is not accompanied with dignity, it can turn into fury”. Today, the accompaniment of the sick is not worthy of the name?

Philippe Bizouarn : No. I am a parent of a schizophrenic who committed suicide ten years ago in the psychiatric hospital. Fury is fury on himself. He experienced successive internments over a year, with “intensive care” sessions as they say, these famous places of isolation in times of crisis. Admittedly, they must be treated, but we are talking about a young person who, when SOS doctors were called, was immediately interned. You should know that when you call SOS doctors at the time of these delirious crises, the police also come. The last time I saw him he was handcuffed. That was how it was most of the time: handcuffs in the hospital and then the isolation ward for a few days, trying to calm him down. It was not he who asked for internment. He usually stayed two weeks, then left because we considered that we no longer had to keep him. He left without any accompaniment, without any accompaniment of the families. It is something that I denounce.

Has the situation worsened since your son’s suicide?

It’s been 13 years and I feel like it’s still kind of the same. According to the testimonies of my colleagues, it is worse. There are fewer and fewer places, terrible expectations for psychiatric beds, especially for children. In Nantes, there is more than a year of waiting to be hospitalized in child psychiatry. These suicidal children are not taken care of immediately and are taken home since there are no more beds to accommodate them. I don’t know if hospital beds are always the right solution, but the wait in Nantes is catastrophic, with child psychiatrists who have been warning people for a long time. We closed beds.

“The reception conditions for psychiatric patients have certainly worsened according to my fellow psychiatrists, especially in Nantes. It’s something of the order of a disaster.”

Philippe Bizouarn

at franceinfo

Is it also the approach to these diseases that needs to be changed?

I am not a psychiatrist, but as a parent, I feel that internment is certainly not the best solution. Slightly tighter support, especially at home and in living quarters, would be an ideal response for parents and for young patients. It is psychiatric internment that is considered abusive. I’m not saying that our psychiatrist colleagues and that the caregivers at the psychiatric hospital are doing a bad job, they are doing what they can, with the impossibility of offering patients support when they leave the hospital. Hospitalization remains, in extremely heavy cases, as for my son, something important, but the support is clearly insufficient. To have consultations in CMP, it was the cross and the banner, therapeutic apartments, almost impossible.