Sitting next to a young teenager, Nadia, who is a foster family, patient in the waiting room of the medico-psycho-pedagogical Center (CMPP) of Romainville, in Seine-Saint-Denis. She comes regularly to this center with the children she takes care of. Finally when she manages to get an appointment: “Ihere are children who wait a year, it’s a very, very long time. My daughter waited a year in.on the speech therapist, psychology… It’s too long! Too long ! For children who really need to talk, who need someone from the outside, it does them good. It’s catastrophic…”
“I have a speech therapist who told me she had 150 children on the waiting list.”
Stéphanie, mother of an 8-year-old child, suffering from a mental deficiencyFrance Info
“It’s between six months and a year to wait for a speech therapist“, breathes Stephanie on her side. Her son, Samy, is in a neighboring room, playing Lego. The eight-year-old boy suffers from a mental deficiency. He is now in good hands, but there too, We had to be patient: nine months to get access to a psychologist and a psychomotrician.On the other hand, it was impossible to get a speech therapist: there aren’t enough of them in the centre.
Stéphanie then found outside, as a liberal after making a lot of phone calls: “I must have called about thirty speech therapists. For some I have not had answers to my messages and those I have had were really sorry. They had no room at all. Each time on the waiting list, and it’s between six months and a year of waiting.”
These interminable waiting times are explained by a general shortage. DIn 32 departments, there is only one child psychiatrist. To check if the problem does not concern only the Paris region, direction Rouen, in another medical-psycho-pedagogical Center. But here again, there is a lack of speech therapists, doctors and psychomotor therapists.
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The waiting list for a first meeting is dizzying: 300 children. This delay in care obviously has consequences for these young people. Example with a child disturbed by the death of his grandfather, and whose condition has worsened, for lack of care. “Theoretically, a few psychological support sessions could be enough to accompany it“, describe Tonino Lacombe, director of the center.
“Because of our waiting lists, it happens that the trauma turns into anxiety disorders, and can then trigger hospitalizations.”
Tonino Lacomble, director of CMPP RouenFrance Info
Waiting delays care and can lead to hospitalization, which sometimes turns into a nightmare. Because when there is no bed in psychiatry for children, it concerns ten departments in France, they are placed with adults. A cohabitation that does not always go well. Several cases of sexual assault of minors by adult patients have been reported to the human rights defender.
Faced with the situation, parents often find themselves helpless, exhausted and helpless with their child who is not well. Some crack. “I have in mind a child in particular who has serious behavioral problems“, recalls Elodie Smette, child psychiatrist at the CMPP in Rouen, he is not violent, but very, very, agitated, he can put himself in danger.
“I have parents, they fight, except the time they spent on my waiting list, they are at the end of their rope”
Elodie Smette, child psychiatrist at the CMPP in RouenFrance Info
“I find myself in the situation where, seeing these exhausted parents, on their knees, I have to explain to them that they will have to continue their efforts. It’s horrible, it’s extremely frustrating”, says the child psychiatrist.
Child psychiatry does not attract. Young doctors are put off by the state of the sector and by this very particular specialty. “There is a problem of attractiveness“, notes Jean Chambry, president of the French Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry is difficult to practice as a liberal. Suddenly, if we choose this specialty, we will be forced to work in the hospital, and that does not attract many interns.
The other difficulty of the job is to find the right keys between the young patient and his legal guardians. “It’s not easy because you have to take care of both the child and his environment, that is to say the family, the parents…“, adds Jean Chambery. Lhe danger, according to Maurice Corcos, professor of child and juvenile psychiatry, is to favor drugs over long-term care, which requires more resources.