“With the health crisis, mental health has become a major social issue”. However, for Rémi Pauvros, spokesperson
of a report just published the regional economic, social and environmental council (Ceser) of Hauts-de-France, “care and support must be improved”. It is also necessary, according to the former deputy and mayor of Maubeuge, to change mentalities by “de-stigmatizing the problem of mental illnesses”.
In the region, there are 600,000 people in depression and 200,000 suffering from a mental illness. Psychological illnesses in particular lead to very high mortality, with a suicide risk 30% higher in the region compared to the national average. A misadventure, which recently occurred to a Lille Internet user, sheds another light on the extent of the problem.
“He terrorized the other tenants of the building”
In September 2021, it took the intervention of specialized police to dislodge a 30-year-old suffering from schizophrenia from an apartment in the Bois-Blancs district of Lille. A year earlier, the young man, who was coming out of a stay in a psychiatric hospital, had signed a rental lease with Isabelle*.
“He had trouble finding accommodation and he made a good impression on me,” she told 20 minutes. However, the situation gradually deteriorated. “He was no longer taking his medication and his schizophrenia was taking over. He terrorized the other tenants of the building and the neighborhood. »
And the owner of the apartment found herself alone to manage the problem. “Social services told me they were scared and the police couldn’t do anything until he had attacked someone,” Isabelle laments. Until the day when threats against his mother make his family and the police react. And here he is again, officially interned.
Shuttle between hospitalization and return to “normal” life
“He ended up agreeing to terminate his lease, testifies Isabelle. I didn’t want him to be expelled, but to be taken care of. When he was following his treatment, he had no behavior problems. The concern is that he had no obligation of care. ” It is precisely on this follow-up that the Ceser report focuses more particularly: “The care pathway goes through stages that shuttle between hospitalization and a return to “normal” life, with all the problems of housing, follow-up care or support that the patient is not always able to assume alone. »
But what to do ? One of the recommendations consists in organizing States General of Psychiatry. “Everyone works in their own corner. There are several very interesting initiatives, but you have to bring everyone together and set goals,” continues Rémi Pauvros. The report thus remains rather gloomy: about 80 psychiatric positions are not filled, for lack of financial and social valuation.
An “essential” MRI to optimize diagnoses
The lack of money also remains an obstacle to clinical and fundamental research in neurosciences which could, however, revolutionize treatments and care. In Hauts-de-France, Ariadnes (Association for research in advanced imaging, neurosciences and mental health) is for the moment reduced to making calls for donations to equip the region with an “essential” tool according to Ceser: the 7 Tesla MRI.
This new, more efficient imagery, which is worth a dozen million euros, makes it possible, among other things, to avoid serious diagnostic errors from the first crisis. However, there are only three in France, of which only one used for clinical purposes at the University Hospital of Poitiers. “With the awareness of the importance of psychiatric illnesses, especially in terms of expenditure from the point of view of health insurance, there is real hope, this time, for a specific well-identified psychiatric research budget”, specifies the report.