Psychiatrist, professor emeritus of legal medicine and health law, Michel Debout has long been involved in the prevention of suicides and psychosocial risks. He is a member of the National Suicide Observatory. Also a founding member of the Jean Jaurès Foundation, this doctor initiated several IFOP surveys for this think tank on the French and suicide, the last of which was in November 2020. Interview.
From the first weeks of the first confinement of March 2020, you warned of the risks of repercussions of the health crisis on mental health and underlined the risk of suicide. Based on what arguments?
Historically, all major financial crises have led to a wave of suicides in the months or years that followed, it is very well documented since that of 1929. In the United States, suicides soared in the early 1930s. During the peak, in 1932, the suicide rate had doubled compared to 1920. The sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, disciple of Emile Durkheim, noted then that beyond the individual effects, unemployment had collective consequences, with “a dark feeling of oppression [qui] weighs on all souls”.
The financial crisis of 2008 had similar consequences, well measured by researchers. A study, conducted in 54 countries and published in the British Medical Journal in 2013, thus estimated at nearly 5,000 the number of additional deaths by suicide for the year 2009. These excess deaths occurred mainly in the United States and Europe, and, as in the other crises, it occurred acted mostly of men. For France, I had estimated that this crisis and the massive increase in the number of unemployed resulted in 750 deaths by suicide between 2009 and 2011, and more than 10,000 attempts.
Today, suicidal gestures and suicidal thoughts continue to increase among young people. What analysis are you doing?
Surveys, including those of Public Health France, show that young people and even children are very affected by the general situation. Let’s remember first that suicidal thoughts, which are the fact of thinking about one’s own suicide, correspond to a risk multiplied by three or four of taking one’s life. It is an interesting indicator on an individual scale but also on a public health level, because it is easy to collect, and reliable, because, contrary to what we have long thought, people talk about their suicidal thoughts if the question is put to them. with empathy. Measuring suicidal thoughts in a population makes it possible to see weak signals appear and, if one is reactive, to carry out prevention. This allows for real-time monitoring, which is not the case with the suicide rate, which increases on a delayed basis.
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