Any parent looking for a psychologist knows this. Finding an appointment with a mental health professional for your child has not always been easy in recent years. And at the public hospital, to which families often turn in the most extreme cases, the situation is also increasingly complicated. At the Nantes University Hospital, the CGT union has just sent a report to the public prosecutor pointing out “the alarming situation” of the service, denouncing a risk of “endangering children”.
While caregivers have been warning for several years about the lack of material and human resources, the breaking point seems to have been reached. Since the start of the school year, after going on sick leave, there are no longer any child psychiatrists, and therefore no more doctors, in the suicidology unit, they reported this Thursday. “We’re tinkering with psychologist-nurse pairs,” laments one of them. But when you have a teenager who, like last week, warns you that she is going to commit suicide in the afternoon, it is very difficult to manage… Fortunately, some external child psychiatrists agree to see our patients, who are sent by ambulance sometimes to the other end of the department. »
Emergency visits are exploding
Young people who are not all sure of finding a suitable bed within the Nantes University Hospital. It must be said that visits to medical, child and psychiatric emergencies have only increased in recent years (more than a thousand in 2023 reports the CGT) after a health crisis which has wreaked havoc on the mental health of children. And teenagers.
As a result, several dozen young people would be hospitalized each year in adult psychiatric wards, “which is not at all appropriate and sometimes dangerous”, caregivers regret. Others would find places in traditional pediatric beds, with again “an environment that is too insecure, like all kinds of objects lying around with which they can harm themselves”.
Return home for some young patients
But for a final portion of these children, after a quick evaluation in the emergency room, there would sometimes be no other choice than to send them home. “Between suicide attempts and eating disorders, every day we have young people in great distress who need to be hospitalized,” notes Elise Le Bail, secretary of the CGT of the Nantes University Hospital and psychiatric nurse at the Saint-Jacques hospital.
“But due to lack of space, we tell children aged 7 or 8 who have just committed the act that we cannot accommodate them! It is extremely serious to have to send them home, she continues. And in terms of guilt, it is very complicated for caregivers to leave a patient in danger, with a completely destitute family behind. Interns no longer wish to take this specialty if it is to practice in these conditions. »
Doctors actively sought
Recognizing a “difficult context”, the management of the CHU and the Regional Health Agency recall that the Loire-Atlantique department is historically under-resourced, with a child psychiatry hospital center (CH Daumezon in Bouguenais) which has only fourteen beds for the entire territory, “four times less than the national average”.
Last year, a hospitalization service for adolescents was created in Saint-Nazaire before having to close for lack of doctors… To the great dismay of the authorities who nevertheless assure that twenty-four new beds will soon be opened and that “steps very active” are carried out “to attract and recruit child psychiatrists”, thanks to a regional emergency plan of almost 10 million euros.
“Announcement effects” for the CGT, which is now considering filing a complaint against the State for “failure to assist a person in danger”. A few days ago, Prime Minister Michel Barnier announced that mental health would be the next major national cause of 2025.