DECRYPTION
A difficult year that ends in the doldrums. With the announcements of Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday evening, the French once again took a blow to the head : the ebb of the second wave of coronavirus being at a standstill, the government has dampened hopes of a return to a normal start to life. Cultural venues are kept closed and we must put aside the traditional New Year’s Eve. The joy of hearing from the President Emmanuel Macron in November that the epidemic is declining again leaves room for increased vigilance.
One in five French people are not doing well
This new setback is actually the last in a long series that makes 2020 a dark year. This period was difficult to go through for many French people, because it was accompanied by unprecedented measures, between confinements, curfews and sometimes the discovery of telework. And this is felt on their morale: according to Public Health France, one in five French people are not doing well and the number of people with anxiety or depressive symptoms has doubled since the start of September and the re-containment.
In adults, this moral suffering is manifested by the fear of contracting or spreading the coronavirus, but also by sadness, anger, fatigue and insomnia. This phenomenon is reflected very concretely in pharmacies, since pharmacies sold between March and September a million boxes of anxiolytics and half a million boxes of sleeping pills more than expected.
Those who are most affected by these depressive or anxious symptoms are students, whose social life has been completely interrupted by distance lessons and the closing of bars, but also the elderly, often sensitive to loneliness. Not to mention the people who lost their jobs.
Towards an increase in the number of suicides?
While for most people these symptoms will go away once life recovers, not everyone will. And this worries a lot Michel Debout, sociologist and member of the Suicide Observatory. “There are groups in the population, such as young people, the unemployed, small businesses, artisans, traders or even the world of culture, who have the feeling of being left behind, of being abandoned” he asserts. “Obviously that causes negative, depressive feelings. And every time the suicidal thoughts increase, the acting out increases.”
“All the crises, and this was proven from the great crisis of 1929, showed that suicides increased in the two years which followed it. That’s what I fear: if nothing is done, we will experience a worrying increase in the number of suicide attempts and the number of suicides in 2021 and even until 2022. “
A hope called vaccine
But in this stagnation which could end tragically, a good news seems to give hope to the French people: the vaccine. In a recent survey, their confidence in the future jumped 10 points thanks to the prospect of this antidote. Another lesson from this survey, the French even find two positive points in the consequences of this unprecedented health crisis in recent history. First, a new way of working thanks to telework and then a greater investment by the government in health.
An application to fight against the psychological effects of the crisis
Before you get to taking medication to relieve symptoms of anxiety, stress, or depression, there are non-drug solutions. For example, the Bordeaux University Hospital has developed an application called Kanopée 2. The latter offers “clinical identification to limit sleep problems and addictive behaviors, early markers of anxiety, stress and depression linked to the crisis. of Covid-19 “, can we read on the hospital site.
“We wanted to set up measurement indicators that link sleep, physical activity, complaints of fatigue and depression, so as to better help users in this very difficult psychological context”, details at the microphone of Europe 1 Professor Pierre Philippe, sleep specialist at Bordeaux University Hospital.
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