The mental health of young people is increasingly degraded

“Since September 2020, there has been a marked increase in emergency room visits for attempted suicides”said Vincent Trebossen, child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Robert-Debré hospital (AP-HP), in the north-east of Paris, to Agence France Presse (AFP).

These cases increased by 25% in January, February and March 2022, compared to 2021, at the same period.

According to the latest bulletin from the Public Health Agency France, visits to the emergency room for suicidal gestures, suicidal thoughts and mood disorders among 11-17 year olds were maintained at the beginning of May “at a high level”higher than that observed at the beginning of 2021.

If all social backgrounds are affected, in 80% of cases suicidal behavior concerns young girls, which is nothing new.

In the child and adolescent psychiatry department of the Robert-Debré hospital, there is also a rejuvenation of the age of the first passages to the act as well as the taking of medication at increasingly high doses. higher.

“At the end of the first confinement, we said to ourselves that the circumstances were exceptional, with an extremely high level of stress; the surprise is that the increase in crises is maintained over time”emphasizes Dr. Trebossen.

An anxiety-provoking pandemic context, but not only

Doctors are struggling to explain the continuation of a trend that predates Covid, but which accelerated with the health crisis and has not faltered since.

“It is rarely a single cause that generates a suicidal act, but the accumulation of stress factors, on a more or less vulnerable ground”emphasizes Dr. Vincent Trebossen.

Sometimes a single “bad grade at school” can change everything. But it is true that “the ambient climate is quite difficult to live with” for a large number of young people, he admits.

War in Ukraine, ecological anxiety, socio-economic difficulties are all concerns that have come to weigh a little more on mental edifices already weakened by the health crisis.

On June 1, Dr. Trebossen welcomed the mother of a 13-year-old girl, who tried to end her life by swallowing antidepressants, before calling Samu.

“My daughter started going bad a little over a year ago”, she told AFP. Her gesture, she explains in particular by the pressure of her former college, for high-level athletes.

“The Covid had also created constraints and an anxiety-provoking context which may have exacerbated tensions”she says, without being sure to understand all the reasons that led her daughter to commit such an act.

A lack of means and saturated beds

The young girl will remain hospitalized for several days in Robert-Debré. “We were told that when a place became free, we had to jump on it”reports her mother, considering herself “lucky”.

“In many places the beds are fullconfirms Dr. Trebossen, sometimes with children who stay a week in the emergency room, without being able to benefit from the most appropriate care, while waiting for a place in child psychiatry”.

Over the past few months, the delays in obtaining an appointment with a psychiatrist have considerably lengthened. And as for the medico-psychological centres, they can reach eighteen months in certain regions.

Faced with growing needs, certain structures have emerged, such as Atrap (Accueil Temporary Rapide Ados Parisiens) in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, which promises a rapid response (48 hours maximum) to young people aged 10 to 15 in a state of crisis and who have no psychiatric follow-up in their sector.

But this daytime reception structure is only accessible to Parisians. Gold “we are more and more often solicited by requests from all over France”indicates to theAFP Anaël Ayrolles, head of clinic in psychiatry at the Robert-Debré hospital. “Today, for example, I was contacted by a doctor from Vichy who could not find any available bed in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes”.

“This should encourage us to review our healthcare system, but also to question the perception of stress factors in society”he pleads.