Michel Barnier’s government has proposed making mental health its great national cause. Young people are particularly exposed to this problem, which has been neglected for several years.
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The children are not doing well. Particularly adolescents, who are experiencing a pivotal moment in their existence in a world disrupted by crises.
In fact, these “successive crises, notably that of covid, have had a significant and aggravating effect on the mental health of our fellow citizens” said Prime Minister Michel Barnier on October 1 in his general policy speech. His government will address this subject, which “affects one in five French people, particularly young people” in “great national cause of the year 2025”.
Between 2017 and 2021, the rate of depressive episodes recorded by Public Health France exploded in the general population, going from 9.8% to 13.3%, while it remained largely below 10% in the previous years. Among those under 15, the increase is particularly notable, particularly among young girls.
“On suicidal ideation, we felt a groundswell rising from 2018“, notes Arnaud Sylla, clinical psychologist from Tours, specializing in adolescent issues.
“We talked about it among ourselves, but it was not something that we quantified at that time in terms of epidemiology. On the other hand, confinement came as a climax“, which amplified and caused the situation to boil over. Strong family promiscuity has in fact caused acts of family violence to explode, condemning thousands of victims to remain living under the same roof as their attackers.
More specifically, “we see more and more adolescent girls whose first relationship with sex is aggression or rape“, deplores the psychologist, mentioning “the explosion of incestual violence” during the confinements of 2020 and 2021. If the extreme majority of sexual violence still takes place in a family context, the development of digital tools and their use on social networks has increased the damage and opportunities for external attackers tenfold.
Thus, the process using artificial intelligence, called deepfake (or “hyperfaking”), allows you to put any face on any video. A method that has since been largely democratized in the pornographic industry, and of which adolescents are the first victims.
Several more diffuse factors also weigh on the mental health of young people, notably a “basic task, well anchored” geopolitical in nature: global warming, the “cold war” and covid are creating an extremely dark vision of the future.
“Declaring mental health the great national cause is great“, squeaks Arnaud Sylla, “but if it is to tell us ‘we heard you’ and do nothing, it’s going to be tricky“. In fact, the previous “great cause of the five-year term“, gender equality, had been criticized not only by the opposition for its lack of effectiveness, but also by the Court of Auditors for the lack of readability and transparency of the different strategies.
However, it is not the fault of those involved in the health system to alert successive governments to its weaknesses. The problems are also similar to those of the hospital: underfunding, lack of key personnel in different departments and increasingly sensitive suffering of the remaining professionals in the face of an ever-increasing public.
In Indre-et-Loire, the opening of a day center at the Tours hospital allows the care of adolescents in distress. “We are lucky to receive grants to help teenagers in the department“, concedes Arnaud Sylla, “and we are also lucky to have many interns who want to come and work there“.
You could say that’s great. But on the other hand, when we see the size of the project, the explosion of problems of anxious school refusal, depression, ideation and suicide, it’s almost a drop in the ocean. .
Arnaud Sylla, clinical psychologist in Tours
“Nobody wants to take care of teenagers“, adds the psychologist. “It’s extremely complicated to take care of, it’s never enough with just one device. Adolescence is political, and it is also very sensitive to politics.“
In fact, the mental health of young people cannot be reduced to the psychological and psychiatric field either. Child welfare officers (ASE) and National Education school nurses are also on the front line… and largely overwhelmed.
