It was this Wednesday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz… Agnès Lassalle, 53, a Spanish teacher was stabbed in the middle of class by one of her 16-year-old students. She dies a few minutes later. The excitement is immense. A minute of silence is observed in all secondary establishments the following day. And since then, the questions remain open…
This young boy described as “intelligent and hardworking” in the words of the public prosecutor of Bayonne, during his press conference, this Thursday, and unknown to the services of social assistance and or educational assistance, a- Was he the victim of a delirious whiff, he who mentioned in police custody “a little voice that speaks to him, a being he describes as selfish, manipulative, egocentric, who incites him to do evil”?
The student who underwent a psychiatric examination while in police custody has since been indicted for murder and remanded in custody.
Beyond the emotion aroused, this drama has brought into debate the issue of the mental health of adolescents and young adults. In mid-February, public health France published an alarmist report on the depressive episodes of the French. If the survey shows an increase in episodes of depression in 2021 throughout the population, the share of 18-24 year olds has almost doubled since 2017.
How to explain this explosion? Should this be seen as a side effect of the Covid pandemic, its curfews and confinements? How to deal with this second epidemic of mental illness as some health professionals seem to call it? At a time when the hospital itself is ill and when the open positions in child psychiatry are not finding takers… Are we doomed to let a generation slip into the fog of depression?
To read to go further:
The weekly epidemiological bulletin of February 14, 2023 from Santé Publique Franceon the prevalence of depressive episodes in France
Atrap’s website (Temporary Rapid Reception for Parisian Teens)
Depression, suicide… At Atrap, we welcome teenagers in an emergency : presentation of the Atrap structure in Télérama
“Yes, for lack of resources, child psychiatry has had to sort children for years”opinion piece by the collective Pédopsy93 published in Le Monde
