Tribune. The current situation forces political power to make decisions under the pressure of often contradictory issues, whether health, social, economic or psychological. For the past year, many of us, psychiatric professionals, have been alerting to the psychological state of the population. That mental health is now taken into account in the decision criteria is obviously a good thing, as the recent entry of a child psychiatrist to the scientific council. But mental health issues should not be assessed in a simplistic manner or be used as a pretext for political choices which would be based on other types of consideration and contrary to health objectives.
Indeed, the degradation of the mental health of the population, indisputable and worrying, is the consequence of many factors: periods of confinement of course, but, more broadly also, all the lasting measures of social distancing, illness and fear. contamination, generalized stress and the loss of many supports for development and leisure; and of course, all current or anticipated material and financial difficulties.
“The deprogramming of non-Covid care affects many patients suffering from both psychiatric pathologies and comorbidities, frequent in this population”
The very strong increase in psychiatric consultations is not unequivocally linked to periods of confinement; we see them gradually increasing with the lengthening of the crisis, and we can expect delayed effects as often after similar catastrophes. There is no scientific data to confirm that the psychological and psychiatric impact of a strict confinement of a few weeks would be greater than that of the extension, over several months, of half-measures of restriction disrupting the daily life of millions of French people and letting the pandemic spread very actively.
On the other hand, the psychiatric consequences of the increase in contamination and the saturation of hospitals are very palpable. The deprogramming of non-Covid care directly affects many patients suffering from both psychiatric pathologies and comorbidities, frequent in this population, such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases. Their health and sometimes their life are then in danger, as they are in the event of contamination by Sars-CoV-2, because it is proven that psychiatric disorders are risk factors of serious forms. In addition, mental health care is itself very weakened in the event of hospital saturation, as we have experienced on several occasions since the start of the pandemic, with the requisition of staff and beds to accommodate Covid patients and with very deleterious disturbances in the conditions of care (elimination of therapeutic outings, prohibition of visits, etc.).
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