Ecological crisis, wars, health risks, lack of prospects… “You cannot imagine to what extent speeches of “despair” and fatalistic messages have consequences, at an age when we are developing ourselves”reports Charles-Edouard Notredame, psychiatrist at the university hospital center (CHU) of Lille, who coordinates the national suicide prevention hotline 3114.
In the mouths of doctors, psychiatrists and child psychiatrists, on the front line facing the suffering of adolescents and young adults, an observation comes back: the anxiety-provoking context, although it is far from explaining alone the discomfort of a fringe of youth, weighs on people’s minds. But it is a tangle of factors that leads some young people to “dark thoughts” or attempted suicide. Young people, it seems, are becoming more and more numerous: this is the trend drawn by the barometer on the subject made public on February 6 by Public Health France.
This declarative survey, carried out in 2021 – year II of the health crisis linked to Covid-19 – with a sample of nearly 30,000 people aged 18 to 85, put the spotlight on the deterioration of mental health of 18-24 year olds: reported suicidal thoughts have more than doubled since 2014 in this age group, going from 3.3% to 7.2%. This development is all the more striking as the data for other age groups tends to stagnate, with a prevalence of 4.2% for all respondents.
Saturated services
Still among young adults, suicide attempts declared in the last twelve months have increased by more than 60% (from 0.7% in 2017 to 1.1% of this age group in 2021); those over their entire life by 50% over the same period (from 6.1% to 9.2%). A break from previous barometers which, since the beginning of the 2000s, and at regular intervals, gave results for this age group that were lower than or comparable to those of older respondents.
A “significant change”supports Public Health France, confirmed by other measures tending to demonstrate that it continues: the number of visits to emergency rooms for suicidal ideas and gestures was higher in 2022 and in 2023 than in 2021, reports the public body.
On the ground, the observation is widely shared: if the shock of Covid-19 and its confinements is fading, the demand for care, among young adults and adolescents, is not weakening. On the contrary: saturated services in child psychiatry and psychiatry, delays in accessing a consultation which are lengthening (up to six months after a suicide attempt, while contact with a doctor within the following month is generally recommended) , protected rooms in pediatric emergencies to accommodate “TS” (suicide attempts), beds occupied by young “suicidal” pediatric patients… Neither the hospital nor community medicine sees the wave decreasing.
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