After a suicide attempt, Laëtitia finds herself in the emergency room of the Bichat hospital in Paris. “I was screaming ‘I want to go home’. And the doctor told me “the more hysterical you are, the less you will go home”. That’s how I ended up hospitalized, “says the young woman, facing the camera, for My head and me, the series of 20 minutes on the mental health of young people. Then aged 17, she was interned in a psychiatric hospital in Sainte-Anne to treat her deep depression.
She recounts her experience in a psychiatric unit in her comic strip How to survive in a psychiatric hospital (while smoking tons of cigarettes) (Kiwi Editions). “I did not expect the reality of internment at all. We expect to Flight over a cuckoo’s nest At the level of the atmosphere but it is much more boring than that. “Isolation, loss of landmarks and of all personal effects…”It’s a dehumanized place,” she says.
Since leaving the hospital, Laëtitia has suffered several depressions. “It took ten years to find out what was wrong. What saved her was her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, made a few years ago. “This diagnosis saved me. Thanks to the therapy, I have put in place a safety system when I have seizures, so that I no longer reach this unbearable moment when I want to end my life. […] it’s worth finding out what’s wrong and getting help to make life more beautiful”.
Laëtitia’s video testimony can be found at the top of this article.
If you are between 12 and 25 years old and need a listening ear, you can call Fil Santé Jeunes on 0800 235 236 (free listening 7 days a week from 8 a.m. to midnight) or talk on the Fil Santé Jeunes chat (from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.).
If you are feeling suicidal thoughts or are close to someone who does, you can call the national Suffering and Suicide Prevention number at 31 14 (free and confidential listening 24 hours a day, 7 days a week).