December 10, press conference with Jean Castex. The news is not good: the health situation is stalling and the holidays are shaping up to be less happy than expected. For students, deprived of face-to-face lessons since October, the prospect of going back to the lecture halls is fading: “Targeted students” may resume at the beginning of January, but for the others, the deadline is set for January 20, “If the epidemic situation allows “. The Prime Minister says: “We are aware that there are students in a very difficult psychological situation. “ Then he lets go: “There are suicides. ”
This brief statement, which was not followed by any details, aroused great emotion in academia. Since the announcement of the confinement on All Saints’ Day, many had alerted to the distress of young people, some even fearing that the situation would kill “More, ultimately, than the virus » (Michel Deneken, president of the University of Strasbourg, November 26 on Franceinfo). And now the Prime Minister confirmed their fears?
“We want the numbers and all the transparency on these deaths, claims Mélanie Luce, President of UNEF. The suicide of a student on his university residence is rare. There, there were several in a row. ” A medical student at the Faculty of Nancy was found dead on October 4. In November, two students were killed, in Nice and Montpellier. Dramas come to recall those which occurred earlier in the year in Montpellier and La Rochelle. ” We want to know how many there are. ”
« In general, we have few figures on suicides ”, deplores Professor Fabrice Jollant, specialist in the subject within the GHU-Paris-psychiatry & neurosciences. To quantify the suicide phenomenon, specialists have three types of measurement. The number of successful suicides: “Data always published late. Those of 2016 are the most recent. ” Suicide attempts: “It’s even more complicated; we use the hospitalization figures for attempted suicide, but it is estimated that around 40% of people who do a TS [tentative de suicide] do not go to the hospital. ” Finally, the polls on suicidal thoughts: “They reflect suffering but do not measure actions. Because fortunately the majority of people who have thoughts of suicide do not kill themselves. ”
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