Tribune. Child psychiatry in France needs the help of the President of the Republic. The needs to ensure the mental health of the youth of our country are dire. It is not so much the plea of a profession too long forgotten by the public authorities that encourages us to challenge Emmanuel Macron – you have started to answer it and we are sensitive to it – but the prospect of a massive lack of care. psychic adapted and essential for our emerging youth, due to a growing lack of trained professionals. A very comprehensive Senate report already testified to this in 2017.
The majority of mental health problems begin before the age of 14. They are all the more likely to impact the child’s future when they are not detected or treated, which is currently the case for a large proportion of them, as a recent report highlights. of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Endless delays
The list of ill-being and suffering of young people is far from being exhaustive, without forgetting neither the current explosion in the needs of young people, amplified by the epidemic context, and which augurs long-lasting care needs, nor the essential questions of young people. abuse, which also requires our intervention because of the psychic repercussions.
For the time being, in France, for around 200,000 children who would need care, only 600 child psychiatrists (half as many as ten years ago) are available. This state of affairs leads to interminable and unbearable delays in accessing care for patients and their families. In addition, there is still insufficient and very unevenly distributed hospitalization capacities.
By reporting on this daily and worrying reality, we wish to challenge you in order to mobilize and initiate the necessary means and reforms. Of course, and we noted this with hope, positive signals have been sent to child psychiatry by your government. We can only welcome this, even if the time necessary to perceive their effects may still seem very long, especially since the reform of the financing of psychiatry, and therefore of child psychiatry, has not yet been considered. Implementation.
But what would additional financial resources be without trained professionals in numbers to put them to good use for the benefit of patients and their families?
Insufficient training capacity
Training is also this challenge that we are facing, and we do not have the necessary means to meet it. That is why we are asking for swift and concrete action from you, Mr President. The training capacities of child psychiatrists were already insufficient before 2017, but the reform of the boarding school has severely reduced them. This, if nothing is put in place, will lead to a real disaster.
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