psychiatric patients facing the coronavirus crisis

There is a population hard hit by the coronavirus about which little is said: psychiatric patients. However, the 420,000 people hospitalized in France throughout the year and the 2 million people being monitored remotely suffer from confinement because they cannot be accompanied as it should be, explains professionals in this sector.

“Right now it’s anti-psychiatric covidienne. We stopped everything that makes the psychic care, deplores Matthieu Bellahsen, psychiatrist disabled in his unit of Asnières-sur-Seine. Because of the confinement, there is no there are more group activities and patients are more often kept in their rooms. “

“You have a commotion which goes up because all our tools of treatment of the environment, for example to take the time with a patient, to sit beside him, to make a game, all that is impossible now”, adds he. Especially since, to apply the security measures, the staff had to put on gowns and masks which “creates a distance”. To bring a little relaxation, cigarettes are now tolerated in the bedrooms. “It is extremely hard for them. We are locking them up more and more. People who are withdrawn, who are phobic and well they are withdrawing and they are more and more phobic,” worries the psychiatrist.

“We will have to start maybe not from scratch but far back”

Another challenge arises: how follow the patients who are at home? There are, in fact, no more consultations at the hospital, which considerably complicates this follow-up, according to doctor Delphine Glachant, psychiatrist in Val-de-Marne: “Usually we will see a facial expression, for example, when things are brought up, an attitude, the body expands or shrinks. It means things that there, we will not have, “she regrets, before adding:” We dig less and so we will have to start maybe not from zero I hope but far back “.