Are psychiatric hospitals “strainers”? Four patients suffering from various mental disorders escaped in the space of ten days in Toulouse. The last was found on Saturday evening in Paris. A maddening “law of series”, recognizes Eric Dupond-Moretti during a visit to the region on Thursday. The Minister of Justice spoke at the microphone of France Bleu “failures” by hastening to return the ball to Olivier Véran, Minister of Health. The Regional Health Agency (ARS) of Occitania sent inspectors to the Gérard-Marchant psychiatric hospital in Toulouse.
The director of the establishment began by defending himself from everything “dysfunction”. “We cannot subscribe to a logic of news items”, explained a psychiatrist to the Midi Dispatch. The hospital then closed the hatches, in submarine mode, following other revelations of runaways presented as so many escapes by the news items of the regional daily. A final statement issued Friday evening was content to announce that the doors will remain closed for the duration of the weekend. “given the risks of new runaways in a context of overmediatization”.
Permission to leave
The Gérard-Marchant hospital, built in the 19th century outside the city, notably housed Jérémy R. The one whom the press baptized “the cannibal” in 2013 was hospitalized until now in Cadillac (Gironde) in a “unit for difficult patients” (UMD) after the savage murder of a nonagenarian in a village in the Hautes-Pyrénées. This time, the former soldier, declared criminally irresponsible, violently attacked with a stick a 73-year-old old lady who was walking her dog in the Chalets district of Toulouse.
Rescued by residents alerted by her cries, the retiree filed a complaint against her attacker and the hospital. Indicted for attempted murder, Jérémy R. was transferred to the Bon Pasteur clinic in Albi (Tarn), the only psychiatric establishment in Occitania to house a “UMD”. The administrative investigation of the ARS will have to establish how this patient, affected by a post-traumatic syndrome considered benign by the military doctors on his return from Afghanistan, was able to reoffend. Aggravating circumstance, Jérémy R. would not have “escaped”: he would have benefited from an exit permit, according to the Midi Dispatch.
“There are not enough psychologists”
“I experienced that as a professional”, testifies Jean-Louis Ducassé, former head of the Toulouse Samu and resident of the Chalets district. The former emergency doctor reports that it regularly happens to find this type of patient “in nature”. An observation shared by Vincent Bounès, who succeeded him. “There are not enough psychologists, just as there are not enough judges”, notes the current director of Samu, interviewed by France 3. The two emergency physicians converge to emphasize that psychiatry is “the poor relation” of a health system already “sick”. “I understand and I share the concern of the people of Toulouse”, informed for his part the mayor of Toulouse. Jean-Luc Moudenc (LR) asks the ARS to communicate “quickly and transparently” the results of its inspection.
Pointed to, the Gérard-Marchant hospital, which concentrates a majority of hospitalized patients “under duress”, is not the only one in question. The prestigious Toulouse University Hospital, which monopolizes the first places in the national ranking of hospitals, has also been affected by these psychiatric “runaways”. A patient, presented as “dangerous”, escaped from a pavilion of the Purpan hospital by triggering a fire alarm. Convicted multiple times, Abdallah B. had been interned since 2019 after driving his Clio into a group of Chinese students in Blagnac. He himself bragged to investigators that he was an “S-rated” terrorist. The man was picked up gently during the day by the BAC in front of an ATM in the Carmes district. The CHU issued a pithy press release without wanting to elaborate on this patient, presented as “incurable” through the Midi Dispatch. The ARS specifies that its inspection mission is now extended to the CHU.
Entry control measures
The case of the last “escapee” from the Marchant hospital was otherwise worrying. Indicted for the rape of his partner in 2011, he fled from Toulouse to try to join her in La Rochelle, according to the regional daily. The fugitive was finally arrested in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, according to the ARS d’Occitanie. His disappearance was announced on Friday, even though the control measures at the entrance to the establishment were supposed to have been reinforced.
The 44-year-old man, declared irresponsible, had been transferred from the Seysses remand center, notoriously overcrowded, to join one of the 40 beds of the UHSA (specially equipped hospital unit) opened in 2012 by the administration. penitentiary within the grounds of the Marchant hospital. A kind of prison enclave, with gates and barbed wire 3.50 m high, within the vast wooded park of the hospital, blown up by the explosion of the neighboring AZF factory in 2001. Officially reserved for sick prisoners “ in crisis”, but not in the most serious cases. These are confined to the ten existing UMDs, true-false “high security” districts where one enters on medical advice but generally without criminal conviction. Only the prefects can decide to take a patient out of it, after the opinion of a college of three psychiatric experts.
A last “escape” reported by the regional press seems to be more of an anecdote set up. It is about a patient gone to visit other patients who reside in a neighboring therapeutic apartment. Found drunk nearby, he had just forgotten the end time of his leave. But the police did not forget the criminal record of this man who had killed two people before being judged criminally irresponsible.