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In Paris, the Atrap center allows teenagers to have a listening ear and psychiatric follow-up, while they are in the midst of a suicidal crisis. Brut went there to investigate the operation of the structure.
“Atrap is a quick temporary home for Parisian teenagers.“Isabelle Sabbah Lim is a child psychiatrist and head of service at Atrap. His daily life: helping young people who have suicidal thoughts, and helping them get better. A real issue that is played around their mental health. “We are a multidisciplinary team, with two child psychiatrists, a psychologist, two nurses, two educators and an art therapist”, describes the child psychiatrist.
“Taking refuge in medication works much more than reacting to ask for help. And it was a time when there were too many things and even talking about it was too complicated. And I didn’t dare go to Mom directly, because, in fact, everyone had realized that it was better and that I was doing well. And it was for fear of also disappointing and disturbing people”, confides a young patient.
“Families, they have a central role in the care of teenagerscontinues Isabelle Sabbah Lim. I would say that a teenager alone does not exist. And so, all this interstitial work, where we have to bring together all the sons of the people around the teenagers, it’s underground work that is added to the clinical work and therefore, as a child psychologist, we don’t only have time in front of our patients, we also have a lot of time on the phone, by email.”