The 67-year-old man is held by four nurses. His body is bent, twisted, his limbs curled up, in a shocking position. The caregivers struggle to get him to sit on the chair in the small room on the ground floor of the Meaux psychiatric hospital (Seine-et-Marne), this Thursday afternoon in December 2024.
It has been four years since Mr. C., suffering from schizophrenia and fronto-temporal dementia, was hospitalized for treatment without consent. Four years during which he was isolated and tied up on numerous occasions. More than 400 isolation and restraint measures, according to a judicial source, recognizing his exceptional situation.
The story of Mr. C. was discovered by The Monde thanks to the use of open data in matters of justice. This allows, in an unprecedented way, access to thousands of recent judicial decisions of hospitalizations without consent and to hundreds of isolation and mechanical restraint measures, these “decisions of last resort” supposed, according to the law, to respond to a “danger of immediate or imminent harm” but strongly criticized by associations of relatives of patients and by some psychiatric professionals for their deleterious effects on the health of patients.
Complex medical profile
This Thursday in December, Mr. C. was presented to a judge of freedoms and detention of the Meaux court responsible for verifying the legality of his hospitalization without consent. Hearings which are held twice a week within the hospital itself.
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