2023-06-30 06:00:19
Psychiatry is a medical discipline that does not leave anyone indifferent. Between arbitrary internments, hasty exits, and serious, spectacular and highly publicized news stories, psychiatry stands out from the rest of medicine, making it almost impossible to calmly debate care for people suffering from mental illness.
Psychiatry can provide care without the patient’s consent, whether in the context of hospitalization at the request of the family or the prefect, or through isolation or restraint measures decided by the medical team. By imposing care, a restriction of the freedom to come and go is thus imposed on patients. Although the objective of health protection is the course of caregivers, this constraint exerted is increasingly contested. Numerous legal actions have been carried out, in particular by patient associations, before the courts and up to the Constitutional Council, forcing the legislator to regulate more strictly the use of these measures. From now on, the judicial judge has a right of inspection on the methods of care without consent and the measures of isolation and restraint that psychiatrists may be required to prescribe. This is a necessary step forward for the respect of the rights of hospitalized persons.
The Council of Europe, in its May 2019 report, supports the idea of “ending coercion in mental health [et de la] need for a human rights-based approach”. This positioning seems to be part of a denial of mental illness. The Council of Europe is reluctant to talk about people suffering from mental illness, preferring to talk about people with mental health problems or, better still, « people with psychosocial disabilities ». If the human being seems to accept physical illnesses, mental illnesses would be shameful pathologies hurting his pride, leading to deny the seriousness of some of them.
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In the context of hospital psychiatry constrained for a long time by budgetary restrictions, the increasing complexity of the regulations makes the practice too complicated. The hope that this complexity would lead to a reduction in coercion has no more yielded results than the reduction in medical supply has led to a reduction in physical illnesses. Mental illness resists both law and libertarian ideologies.
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