Grandstand. For several months, Emmanuel Macron and Olivier Véran have welcomed a reform concerning the reimbursement of consultations with a psychologist, which they emphatically present as a historic breakthrough for people in psychological distress.
Make no mistake about it. Many psychologists are in favor of a mechanism for reimbursement of sessions in the name of equal access to psychological care. And then, let’s not sulk our pleasure: our profession is finally recognized as being of public utility, far from the sulphurous clichés that it still sometimes carries. However, the MonPsy devicewhich will come into effect from April 5, is unacceptable and dangerous for us and for our future patients.
The whole of the profession has not ceased to say so, but our requests and proposals have remained a dead letter. So much so that we, liberal psychologists and practicing in institutions, are now determined to boycott this protocol, the initial reasons for which many of us were nevertheless praising.
The discredited public mental health service
At the outset, we would remind the President of the Republic and his Minister for Solidarity and Health that free access to psychological care provided by psychologists has existed in its noble, unconditional and free principle for some sixty years within public hospital and medico-social structures.
However, these establishments are no longer able to carry out their mission (the waiting lists for the care of new patients vary from several months to a few years) because successive governments have allowed them to gradually wither away by limiting their means and by transforming their minds.
Never in France has the public mental health service been abused and discredited to such an extent: closure of psychiatric services in the public hospital service, systematic exclusion from our profession in wage increases, mistreatment of structurally underpaid psychologists, worn out and resigned by procedures subjecting them to incessant and meaningless constraints.
Mental health is not just about medicine
In this distressing context, the system promoted by the executive for the liberal sector is nothing but window dressing for purely electoral purposes. Let us rather judge. Firstly, the sessions will only be reimbursed upon prior referral by a doctor. In our daily practice, a doctor’s orientation is perfectly compatible with our exercise.
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