the call for help from the Nantes University Hospital
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The crisis reached its climax in March. Throughout the month, Laurence Dreno, child psychiatrist at the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Nantes, and his team faced, each week, the arrival at pediatric emergencies, on average, of seventeen young people in psychological distress. “You arrive and every morning there are at least three young people who have attempted suicideexposes, in a flat voice, Mme Dreno. At one point, I felt immensely dizzy. I said to myself: “But how am I going to think about seventeen care projects for patients?” »
The practitioner experienced a new moment of depression when, three months later, she saw several of these young people returning to the emergency room. “They had not even won an appointment in a CMP [centre médico-psychologique] because all the structures are completely overwhelmed. There, I said to myself that I had worked in a vacuum. »
Everywhere, in hospitals in France, the number of adolescents and children “presenting a moderate to severe depressive syndrome” has experienced a vertiginous increase since the end of the first confinement due to the crisis linked to Covid-19. The sector of child psychiatry was already under tension, here it is taking on water, for lack of suitable structures and human resources.
Nearly 900 minors under the age of 16 went through the reception of pediatric emergencies at the Nantes University Hospital in 2021 for psychological disorders. “Four hundred and thirty were hospitalized, compared to 250 to 280 before the epidemicsays Professor Christèle Gras-Le Guen, head of the pediatric emergency department and the pediatric department of Nantes hospital. We should have hospitalized more of them, but we had no solution. “Before, we used to carebreath Mme Dreno. We saw the patients, we took care of them. And then we directed them towards consultations in CMP. Now we are sorting. »
“Institutional Abuse”
Minors expressing suicidal thoughts are sent home with a “simple” referral to consultations. However, medico-psychological centers show treatment times ranging from four to six months. “These structures register fifteen requests per week at the very least when, previously, they provided fifteen consultations per monthexpands Mme Dreno. What is unbearable is that we professionals know that in six months a lot happens in a life and that situations can get worse. »
At best, minors in distress are cared for in the pediatric ward. “We do with the means at handemphasizes M.me Gras-Le Guen. Of the 36 beds in the pediatric department of the CHU, half are regularly occupied by patients with mental health problems. »
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