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In their little windowless office, they crowd the phone to the computer, then from the computer to the filing cabinet, then they wander through the long corridors of the hospital. We are at the Crisis and Psychiatric Emergency Center of the Clinics of the Saint-Luc University of Brussels. For ten days we start again, as at the time of the first birth and especially the decline, last spring.
“There’s a lot of work, explains Dr. Gérald Deschietere, psychiatrist, head of department, we see many people, children, adolescents and the elderly. One in two people do not have a psychiatric history, they come to us at the request of a general practitioner, a social support service or even schools. […] There are problems of sadness, anxiety and unfortunately sometimes even thoughts of suicide “.
I fight my suicidal thoughts
This afternoon is busy. One emergency after another. “You can go to the reception, andexplains Clara Epp, a young psychiatrist, you say you are a planned emergency “. Accompanied by Vanessa Geeraert, the psychologist, Clara leads a 24-year-old student and her mother into the consulting room. The young man has suicide plans. The mother is a bit abandoned, she doesn’t understand, the son wants to spare her, he won’t say everything in front of her, not everything, but it’s already not bad:
“I still don’t realize I’m in a psychiatric unit, He said, mentally I’m fine, I’m not crazy… It’s following the dark thoughts I talked about that I’m here, that’s what I think. Did you know I think he said to his mother, of a potential passage to the act … For the moment, it is not a real desire to die, and even if these thoughts come for the moment, I can always fight, but by force, maybe it will be that I will be exhausted and that I will have need help “.
“Can you detail these thoughts? Asks the psychiatrist, I don’t prefer, I don’t want to worry about my family, he replied. The mother goes out and he explains: “if ever I’m too exhausted from the pain … The team will admit him to the hospital.
Young people under 20 in difficulty
This young man is not the only one. After Covid, the demand for psychiatric care exploded. At Fond Roy Psychiatric Hospital, it’s the same observation: “I have an increase in requests for help from young people between the ages of 17 and 20, explains Dr. Caroline Depuyt, psychiatrist, there was childbirth, Covid and all the worries that derive from it, there is school dropout and there is also social collapse. All bonds of love and friendship are very important for young people. They find themselves cut off from all of this, as a result, we see characterized depressions in seventeen year olds. “
Patients decompensate
Return to the Saint-Luc crisis center. That night, a lady was taken by the police. He decompensated. She is deprived of her liberty and was placed in a detention room. Clémence Got, psychiatrist has to make an expert opinion at the request of the prosecutor. The lady, in her sixties, is surprised to be in the psychiatric emergency room. “What happened ? Does the psychiatrist ask him?“They wanted to force me, that’s when it got out of hand, the patient whispers. “Do you feel persecuted? Sometimes threatened? Yes, but not by my family, they are other people … Do you hear subliminal voices on the radio? Yes, that’s right, I’ve heard things …” Difficult to follow. The words are inconsistent. It’s the story of a lifetime, stuck on the street.
“We see imbalances linked to isolation, explains Clémence Got, the person will not necessarily decompensate in relation to Covid, Covid is a precipitating factor. We see paranoid imbalances, patients express the fear of dying, they feel threatened ”.
After the day, the night
The day is far from over in the hospital and there will still be night. “We are trying to accommodate them as usual, despite the increase in cases. It requires a lot of work from the team, plus all the protocols related to Covid”, says Dr. Gérard Deschietere. “Luckily we support each other, we talk about it, we have to resist, we have no choice”.
►►► Read also: Coronavirus: Neurological Injuries and Psychiatric Disorders for Post-Covid Patients
Clara, the psychiatrist and Vanessa the psychologist understand each other at a glance. Like caregivers in intensive care units, they are exhausted. They found, as a last resort, a bed for a 15-year-old girl who cannot return to her family. It is only for one night. They worked there all morning, phoned all mental health facilities in Wallonia and Brussels. The network is saturated. Tomorrow morning we will have to start the research again, put the girl in the kennel, like the young student this afternoon, and like the lady in forced hospitalization. That’s it and it won’t stop.
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