The Court of Auditors, in turn, warns against offering child psychiatric care

It is in the spotlight – and it is not the first – on the state of child psychiatry in France. But in the face of signals shared by childhood specialists about the prevalence of mental disorders among the youngest, the report published by the Court of Auditors on Tuesday, March 21 has the dignity of recalling, with supporting figures, the challenge. “Access and [d’]Care Offer for Reorganization”.

That’s also the name of the 140-page report presented to the press on Tuesday morning by the first president of the court, Pierre Moscovici. The culmination of over a hundred interviews, nearly 300 hearings, trips to four regions and two foreign countries – Sweden and Belgium – the report presented by a senior official is swirling around. “three messages” : “The offer of mental health care does not meet the needs of young people ; A route organized into “sectors” [un héritage des années 1970], It is difficult to read and saturated; Ultimately, governance is ill-adapted.”Despite the political will that has emerged since 2018 and the government’s adoption of a “road map” on mental health.

Affected children and adolescents at the center of the report. The magistrates of Rue Cambon, insisting on the lack of recent epidemiological data, put forward 1.6 million interested young people. Between 750,000 and 850,000 of these minors receive child psychiatric care each year. In essence, we measure those who do not benefit from it, so the Covid-19 crisis has magnified – and revealed – the scale of the needs.

Lack of “first line” care

Caregivers, institutions and treatment centers are also under strain at the heart of the report. In the current state of the organization, especially in the medical-psychological centers for newborns and minors – these “CMP-IJs” are considered as a gateway to the course of care – the court notes that some of the young people under monitoring only experience “light violations” To the detriment of caring for children with more severe disorders.

The gap between needs and supply reveals the structural difficulties of access: the lack of healthcare “A line” Adapted to the diversity of disorders, insufficient gradation of care, territorial disparity. A few figures illustrate this tension in the long term: the number of child psychiatrists thus decreased by 34% between 2010 and 2022. During this period, the number of these practitioners fell from 3,113 to 2,039, according to the data reported. by the College of Forensic Physicians.