By Pierre-Alexandre Aubry
Published on 24 Mar 21 @ 12:17 pm
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Doctor Christine Garrigou, head of the service psychiatry at Georges – Daumézon hospital center, at Bouguenais, is increasingly faced with psychological distress.
In connection with the Bouguenais hospital center, the medico-psychological centers of Clisson and Vertou have stepped up consultations since the onset of the health crisis.
Consultations and hospitalizations on the rise
Every day, these centers receive more and more inhabitants of the Nantes vineyard, who come to tell them about their discomfort in the face of the measures put in place to fight the pandemic.
Measures which play an increasingly perceptible role in the psychological state of the population.
This is what Dr. Garrigou notes :
We have a lot of new requests, whether for consultation or hospitalization. These are people we had never seen before.
Welcomed by a nurse in medico-psychological centers, patients are then referred to a psychiatrist.
Regularly present in the Vineyard, Christine Garrigou perceives an increasingly palpable discomfort.
“We have people who don’t go out all day. And completely desocializing has never done any good. “
Multiple anxieties
People who already suffer from mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, suffer greatly from this often anxiety-provoking environment and the lack of social ties.
“We receive people who are also depressed because they have big financial worries because of this crisis”, indicates the psychiatrist, who also notes an increase in addictions, with patients who fall back into alcoholism, for example.
People do not verbalize it but we feel a fear, with anxieties about death or illness. There is the fear of dying, but also for loved ones
The restrictive measures put in place to counter the virus continue to upset daily life.
These changes deeply affect mental health, which weakens over time.
“It’s wear and tear. The more the months go by, the more it gets worse. And the history of variants has reactivated anxieties. We don’t see the end of it, that’s what’s hard. “
The piling up of efforts made over the past year has led to this wear and tear.
For others, it can cause a form of explosion. So much so that the psychiatrist explains seeing many patients she had “not seen for months”.
Receptions “overwhelmed with requests”
Anyone who is having difficulty can come to one of the region’s medico-psychological centers to talk to a professional. If necessary, a psychiatrist then takes over.
We have all kinds of requests! It is the psychic impact of the state of our society. There is a palpable tension in the population. I hear anxieties with phrases like “we’ll never get out of this.”
The psychiatrist fears a wave of hospitalizations in psychiatry in the coming months.
“Because it’s when the pressure is going to let go that people will crack. “” The nurses who manage the reception are inundated with requests.
A Clisson, for example, we have a lot of work ”, indicates the doctor, specifying that there is no psychiatrist in the sector.
The epidemic wave that is making the news is also taking the form of a wave on the mental health of residents.
Psychiatric consultations are already increasing, and the coming months look very dark.
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