After a rally in the courtyard of the establishment, representatives of the unions and caregivers of the psychiatric services were invited to the meeting of the supervisory board of the hospital to demand accountability after the attack the day before.
The day after the stabbing that injured three at the hospital, the emotion was palpable. In the early afternoon, two hundred people took their places in the courtyard of the administrative services building for a rally to support the victims and denounce the slow agony of psychiatry. There were the unions CGT, FO, CFDT and UNAFAM (National Union of Families and Friends of People Who Are Sick or Mentally Handicapped), but also non-union members affected by the events of the previous day.
The aggression perpetrated by an unbalanced man who asked three times to be taken care of cast a chill when the hospital management announced the closure of 30 beds in early April. “We have been warning about staffing problems for months and even years, attacks Manuelita Vintar, of the CGT health. Since the Covid, we have seen a multiplication of psychiatric and psychological pathologies while our guardianship has abandoned us. We’ve been saying for a while that a tragedy is going to happen and it happened yesterday. We escaped the worst, but we have to do everything so that it doesn’t happen again.”
“What we feared has happened”
Despite a voice at half mast, Agnès Seguela took up the torch for FO. “In 20 years, half of the psychiatric beds have been closed. There are 180 left and 30 will be eliminated, i.e. a fifth as the number of patients increases. What we all feared has happened, the hospital is in the headlines. What decisions will elected officials and management make, are they waiting for other tragedies to move?
In the process, the demonstrators decided to invest the room where a meeting of the supervisory board was to begin. Booed on their arrival, Brigitte Barèges, president of the body, Didier Jaffre, boss of ARS Occitanie who came specially and Sébastien Massip, director of the hospital, were assailed with questions and reproaches.
The opportunity also for the staff to express the ills of a service in great suffering: recruitment with an internal competition which discourages volunteers, working conditions, the absence of a bonus for health auxiliaries, insecurity with death threats and insults, the dilapidation of buildings and equipment, everything is gone. To get out of this crisis, Didier Jaffre proposed to include in the minutes of the meeting that no bed would be closed and made the commitment to do everything possible to find arms. Because for lack of doctors and nurses in particular, there will apparently be no other choice but to close these beds. The ball is in the court of Sébastien Massip and human resources.
