In his daily life, the Dr Gilles Chamberland has a front-row seat to observe the full complexity of human nature. Even after 30 years of psychiatry at the Philippe-Pinel Institute, he has never ceased to be surprised by what is happening in the heads of his patients.
Published at 5:00 a.m.
“There’s something coming out of left field all the time. We say to ourselves: “Okay, let’s see! Where does that come from?” These are scenarios Hollywood wouldn’t dare imagine. »
In his little dilapidated office, he gives me the example of this schizophrenic man who barely spoke. He was more like growling. He lived in his own world. One day, during karaoke, he took the microphone and sang “a whole song, really good, with a beautiful voice.”
Throughout these unexpected episodes, nonsense speeches – delivered with excellent vocabulary and in a standard tone – are commonplace.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
The Dr Gilles Chamberland has been a psychiatrist at the Philippe-Pinel Institute for 30 years.
A perfectly normal-looking person can tell me that they had sex with Santa Claus and then gave birth to a banana. And she is convinced of what she says.
The Dr Gilles Chamberland, psychiatrist at the Philippe-Pinel Institute
When Gilles Chamberland says that he chose psychiatry rather than surgery because he did not want a “flat routine”, we say to ourselves that he is served.
The average citizen also encounters all kinds of characters with disjointed speeches. They are mainly found near metro entrances. It is not uncommon, moreover, to hear that Montreal has become an open-air psychiatric hospital. In the workplace, mental health disorders have never been so expensive for insurers. In schools, the number of students medicated due to anxiety disorders is exploding. And what about the children? The very morning of my meeting with the Dr Chamberland, Tel-jeunes had just announced that young people aged 6 to 11 were calling it with suicidal thoughts.
It is in this context that I wanted to sit down with a brain expert to understand what is happening. Are we becoming more and more fragile?
The Dr Chamberland doesn’t believe him. “It’s clear that life is more and more stressful, that life is more and more demanding. We juggle more balls at the same time, to the detriment of our sleep, to the detriment of lots and lots of things. » Even though experts are sounding the alarm, the importance of sleep continues to be underestimated, both for adults and for children’s development. We have a free and effective tool to work better, but prefer to do something else with our time.
Hours in bed are insufficient, while those where we are up lead to unprecedented mental fatigue, especially for professionals whose work requires them to be alert and concentrated.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
“It’s clear that life is more and more stressful, that life is more and more demanding,” underlines Gilles Chamberland.
We are approached everywhere, we are approached by the internet, television, the telephone, by a million things that we didn’t have before. We have more obligations, more stress. And that stress ends up eating away. We end up not being able to function anymore.
The Dr Gilles Chamberland
The Dr Chamberland points to another factor: in organizations, he says, “no one is accountable for anything anymore” and teams change constantly. This is not without consequences on the mental health of “a little obsessive” people, he observes in his private practice where he works one day a week.
“It’s mostly girls. It’s a quality, because they do things well, but at the same time, these people are too responsible. They will compensate for the others. They see that if they don’t do the work, it doesn’t work. In our world, being a perfectionist doesn’t make sense,” says the spiritual doctor.
As for those who wander the streets, but who should rather be treated, the psychiatrist regrets that society has chosen to “treat mental illness in the same way as physical illness”, because it is “illusory” to think that a person who suffers from mental illness will seek care. The sicker a person is, “the less they are in reality and the more they will be suspicious of care”.
This is without taking into account that the State has chosen to put “the pendulum very much on the side of individual freedom”. “It’s as if, in the mind of the legislator, doctors were not reliable,” laments Dr.r Chamberland. As if the family is unreliable, as if no one is reliable. So we’re bringing everything back to court. It is the court that will make the decision in place of a patient. It’s absurd to think that a psychiatrist will want to keep a patient for nothing. » Today, every step requires lawyers.
Besides, when he started practicing, there were no lawyers in hospitals for psychiatry. Today, “there is not a hospital that does not have at least three lawyers. “It’s fortunes that are being spent…”.
For years, Gilles Chamberland has been one of the rare psychiatrists who have agreed to answer questions from the media regarding violent crimes or unprecedented events that we are trying to explain. Among other things, he commented on the cases of ex-cardiologist Guy Turcotte, the saber attack in Old Quebec and, more recently, the trial of Dominique Pelicot in Mazan. Even if his comments have earned him criticism and complaints from the College of Physicians, he continues to share his expertise and his passion, meticulously choosing the subjects he addresses to avoid problems. In his opinion, the College “discriminates with psychiatry” which can also provide explanations and hypotheses without making a diagnosis, which is prohibited.
He gives the example of a pulmonologist who, following the description of a person’s symptoms, could enumerate the list of possible illnesses on television. “We are gagged under the pretext that we are making diagnoses, which, as far as I am concerned, makes no sense. » Working in the particular world of psychiatric hospitals where psychoses and delusions coexist necessarily requires qualities and a particular personality. “You have to be quite humble,” notes the main person concerned, “because you never really have success. »
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Humility is one of the main qualities required to be a psychiatrist, says Dr.r Gilles Chamberland.
A surgeon can change a hip, a cardiologist can unblock an artery, but in psychiatry, “you always have to start again”, underlines the Dr Gilles Chamberland. Patients relapse constantly.
His satisfaction therefore emerges from very small things. From a person who opens their bedroom door enough to let in a tray full of food, to another who agrees to go out into the fresh air.
The psychiatrist compares his feelings to those of parents who witness their child’s first steps, in ecstasy, even if it is only a matter of steps. “In psychiatry, you have to see it like that. One step leads to another. And we’re happy knowing that it could all fall apart at any time. » This is a positive attitude that some perfectionists should undoubtedly try to develop… for the good of their mental health.
Questionnaire without filter
Me and coffee: I don’t like it, but it becomes good with cream and sugar. But I provide it to my team, it’s unifying, it’s social. It’s nice even if it’s just a coffee. And for patients, it is rare that coffee is not a therapeutic issue, there is caffeine dependence, it is even part of our diagnoses.
Qualities I look for in others: I appreciate people who have a certain candor, in the sense that they have the capacity to wonder, to trust, to be easily happy, which is the opposite of being suspicious, superficial or calculating. It’s a breath of fresh air and that, for me, generates a certain respect. I also look for intelligence and modesty.
What irritates me: Bad faith.
The words I am no longer able to hear: I would respond with words that are lost. No one uses adverbs anymore, it’s disconcerting. We take the adjectives, which qualify the nouns, then we qualify the verbs with them. Adverbs no longer exist!
What I do to get a job: I’m training. Unfortunately, this is always what takes the edge, because it is not included in the agenda.
Who is Gilles Chamberland?
- After practicing law, Gilles Chamberland turned to medicine;
- He is a psychiatrist at the Philippe-Pinel Institute in Montreal, where he was director of professional services. He also works in private practice where he provides assessments and psychotherapy;
- He was awarded the Distinguished Fellow distinction of the Canadian and American Psychiatric Associations;
- He regularly acts as an expert witness for the Crown in medical and forensic psychiatry in court cases.
