A parent worried about his son who talked about acting out. A doctor who doesn’t know how to handle his young patient’s suicidal thoughts. A schoolboy who is about to make a desperate gesture. These are all the calls that 3114 has been receiving, 24 hours a day, since the free number was launched in October 2021. On the phone, trained health professionals detect the degree of urgency, to react quickly if necessary. In our region, “since March, around 14% of calls have required the intervention of the Samu”, explains Dr Maud Benetti, psychiatrist in the psychiatry department at the Dijon University Hospital. In a large majority of cases, the professionals manage to reassure those who call with suicidal thoughts and bring them the help they needed.
These students at the Jean-Rostand high school in Nevers are mobilizing against school harassment
“Sometimes, the respondents contact the treating doctor, so that he sees the caller urgently, relates Maud Benetti. Sometimes, they offer an emergency psychiatric consultation at the hospital center. Sometimes, the intervention of a doctor is not necessary, people rather need a relay with a social worker, who will help them manage family or financial problems.
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This explains the local deployment of 3114, effective since last March. “To provide the right answer, you need a detailed knowledge of what exists in the medico-social structures, in the associations, in the social services… explains Dr Christophe Debien, psychiatrist at the Lille University Hospital and in charge of the deployment of 3114. This requires painstaking work.” The new service, which today has six responding nurses, two doctors and a social worker (1), must recruit a network manager for this. Its mission: to identify in the eight departments of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté all the local initiatives which can then be proposed by telephone and, above all, to mobilize all the people who can relay the information to make 3114 known. “We have an example , it’s Nièvre, for the moment, there is no appeal, notes Christophe Debien. However, it is the department where people commit suicide the most.”
In Nièvre, one call a day reports acts of school harassment
“This is a subject that must be talked about so that the fatality rate falls, so that extreme distress is taken into consideration, included in its own right in the field of health, insists Professor Jean-Christophe Chauvet-Gelinier, head from the adult psychiatry department at the CHU. Suicide and mental health are still taboo subjects, but which affect, one day or another, all of us.” 9,200 deaths were attributable in 2022 to suicide, recalls Aline Guibelin, territorial delegate of the Regional Health Agency; and 200,000 people a year attempt suicide.
(1) Also in support: a health executive and a medical secretary
A device that will still expand. The opening of 3114 comes a few months after the launch, in our region, of the VigilanS device, intended to prevent (thanks to individual follow-up) recidivism after a suicide attempt. And it comes a few months before the opening of a brief therapeutic intervention unit which will welcome patients in distress. The goal: to manage the crisis situation through rapid intervention so that patients resume their lives after only a few days – without isolating themselves, as current protocols provide, for several weeks.
Alexandra Caccivio
2023-06-09 06:12:37
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