The symbolic burial of French public psychiatry is underway. The wooden crosses planted in the ground of the entrance to the public mental health establishment (EPSM) of Flanders, in Bailleul (North), have illustrated for several months the fight of some of the 1,200 hospital workers against the transfer. announced 70 psychiatric beds towards the EPSM of Armentières, 15 kilometers away. “Bailleul will be cut off from part of its history for lack of psychiatrists and interns in sufficient number, denounces Nicolas Lefebvre, chairman of the supervisory board since 2015, and deputy mayor of Bailleul. We are the sad reflection of the collapse of public psychiatry in France. “
In the North, as everywhere in France, from Caen to Puy-en-Velay via Allonnes (Sarthe), the shortage of psychiatrists has become such that health establishments are forced to close beds or merge to ensure a minimum patient care guarantees. “Even in Paris, in Sainte-Anne, they have trouble recruiting, explains Doctor Christian Müller, President of the Conference of Presidents of Establishment Medical Commission (CME) of Specialized Hospital Centers (CHS) in Psychiatry. The situation is particularly worrying and what is happening in Bailleul is emblematic of national psychiatry. “
Almost impossible recruitments
In Bailleul, at the foot of the mountains of Flanders, the one that the inhabitants still sometimes call “asylum” is an institution in the territory. A city within a city that has had up to 2,000 patients. For 160 years, an immense park and part of the thirty or so pavilions spread over 35 hectares have welcomed the sick. Over the years, the situation has continued to deteriorate in this specialized hospital center which provides mental health care for the inhabitants of Inner Flanders and the coast. “The bottom line is that we don’t have doctors and we can’t recruit”, summarizes Valérie Bénéat-Marlier, general manager of EPSM Lille-Métropole and Flandres.
Problem of medical demography, the annual number of trained psychiatrists was divided by five in the mid-1980s. The crisis is unprecedented, with nearly 30% of vacant practitioner positions in France. “In Bordeaux, for example, there is a clear tendency towards the request of extension of activity of over 65 years to compensate for this lack”, explains Christian Müller.
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