The Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq, at the Élysée, September 23, 2024. JULIEN MUGUET FOR “LE MONDE”
It is now confirmed: the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, confirmed, Tuesday October 1, during his general policy declaration to the National Assembly, to make mental health the “great cause” of the year 2025. He had already spoken out in favor on September 22, during his first televised intervention. By bringing a personal touch to this commitment: the new tenant of Matignon had highlighted the investment of his mother, for thirty-five years, as president, in Savoie, of the National Union of Families and Friends of Mentally Ill People . An establishment intended for people suffering from mental disorders bears his name, in Aix-les-Bains: the Denise-Barnier residence.
Those who follow the debates on these subjects know that this concern for mental health has already been displayed on numerous occasions under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. With one last missed appointment: a National Council for Refoundation, promised by the government for mid-June, was canceled at the last minute, after the dissolution of the National Assembly. The former Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, in his general policy speech in January, also mentioned the mental health of young people as a priority.
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Concretely, what will change? The “great cause” label allows you to obtain free broadcasts of messages on public television and radio. And to shine a spotlight on an issue – in 2024, the Olympic year, physical and sporting activity, or in the past, gender equality, autism, the fight against violence against women, cancer… Labeling has been demanded for months by a very large collective bringing together around twenty players in mental health, psychiatry and the medico-social sector, representing some three thousand organizations.
A “real impact”
“Awareness campaigns of this scale, as there may have been in Anglo-Saxon countries, have a real impact, defends Angèle Malâtre-Lansac, general delegate of the Alliance for Mental Health (one of the collective’s organizations) and former deputy director of health at the Montaigne Institute. They allow progress on access to rights, destigmatization, or in the fight against discrimination, and can be the start of real change in society. »
“There are 13 million people affected by a mental disorder each year, one in four people are affected during their lifetime: this seems to us to be sufficient justification for a government to take the subject head on”agrees Jean-Philippe Cavroy, general delegate of Mental Health France, another key member of the collective.
