QWho could be against it? “Mental health” has become, in a few weeks, an issue on the political agenda of all the ministries of the new government – starting with health, work, education, housing, etc.
And “major subject”defended the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, Thursday October 10, beginning this marathon day marked by the presentation of two budgetary texts, with a trip to Vienna on this theme. Mental health will be “great national cause” of the year 2025. Of which act.
And yet, behind this political communication, a reservation is heard in circles of psychiatrists: shining the spotlight on mental health does not risk relegating psychiatry, its establishments, its patients to the shadows?
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The semantic battle is not new, but it is not trivial. The notion of mental health emerged in the 1960s, when until then we only spoke of psychiatry, asylums or “mental hygiene”. It is psychiatrists themselves who instill this new name, in an emancipatory way, to put the patient “back in the city”. In the 1980s, doctors again proposed replacing psychiatric hospitals with public mental health establishments, which would be the case in the following decade.
A “state of well-being”
But gradually, mental health will go well beyond the medical field, and encompass ever more numerous dimensions: in the 2000s, the World Health Organization defined it as an essential component of health, as a “state of well-being which allows everyone to realize their potential, to cope with the normal difficulties of life, to work successfully and productively”. At the risk of muddying the waters, by considerably opening the field, as other authorities will continue to do.
Today, the expression of “poor” mental health, or mental health “disorders”, can refer to people suffering from insomnia or anxiety, as well as to schizophrenic or bipolar patients. , to hyperactive schoolchildren, young people experiencing suicidal thoughts, exhausted employees. The avalanche of figures put forward in the public debate reflects this same vagueness. From one report to another, or depending on the actors who speak, we are talking about 1 person in 3, 1 in 4, 1 in 5… During the year, during their life, occasionally or in the long term: all estimates seem possible.
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