“We are on red alert, beyond words and promises, we need action”, child psychiatry in great pain

In 2025, mental health will be the major national cause desired by the Barnier government. Degraded mental health since the covid-19 crisis, particularly among young people. In Loire-Atlantique, requests for hospitalization of children and adolescents have exploded, but their care remains complicated, due to a lack of sufficient beds and staff.

The finding is alarming. In Pays de la Loire, as everywhere in France, psychological suffering has never reached such a level. Since the health crisis, it is estimated that one in four people suffer or will suffer from mental disorders.

Problem is, in our region, psychiatry, and particularly that which affects minors, is itself suffering.

Space Unit, deliberately colorful walls, where young people aged 15 to 20 come to confront their dark thoughts, reflect on their risky behavior, treat their disorders.

The team offers simultaneous support for adolescents and their families, and finally for those who are lucky enough to have access to it.

Demand has exploded. We have young people going to emergency rooms exponentially, we have more and more of them

Lea de Macedo

Pediatric psychologist

“Currently, in the hospital, we have our twelve beds which are taken, explain Léa de Macedo, pédosychiatre, thena a waiting list which stops at ten patients so that we remain in emergency, but which is almost complete. And on the adult units, they have around ten minors, which is enormous. Minors ranging from 13 to 18 years old, but we have very, very young ones who are in adult beds.”

Loire-Atlantique has less than fifteen child psychiatry beds. And the lack of staff is even more problematic, with 40% of vacant positions.

“There are a few beds that are opening up, but there are few consultation solutions behind them, because in fact, the public system cannot cope with the number of requests that there are, deplores Léa de Macedo, on sets up home care systems to be as close as possible to patients. We build with what remains, but in a kind of tight flow which occupies a large part of our mind and which inevitably partly interferes with daily care.

Suicide attempts among young people are on the rise. Desperate acts that we sometimes find as young as seven or eight years old.

Within the Nantes UMPP, child psychiatric medical emergencies, the number of visits continues to increase. 750 in 2021, 1,100 in 2023.

Currently the majority of patients who have just attempted suicide under the age of 15 years and 3 months are hospitalized in Loire-Atlantique

Fanny Gollier-Briant

Child psychiatrist

“Those for whom this is not possible, because there is no space, because we have the impression that we will be able to do otherwise, we send them home with guards all the same. crazy, deplores Fanny Gollier-Briant, child psychiatrist, We are not aware at the moment, we have not been told that a patient had committed suicide following a visit to the emergency room and following the inability to be hospitalized. But it’s something that haunts us.”

“Many of our colleagues are in a situation of exhaustion, of burn-out, because they are trying to maintain structures that they have known to work well, explains Rachel Bocher, psychiatrist, president of the union of public practice psychiatrists, for them, it is terrible to see the healthcare supply collapse.

We are on red alert, beyond words and promises, we need action

Three new hospitalization units for minors are due to open in the Nantes metropolitan area by 2026, or 24 additional places. Loire-Atlantique is historically under-resourced in this area. With less than five beds per 100,000 minor inhabitants, this is four times less than the national average.

With Vincent Raynal and Olivier Cailler

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