qWho could be against? “Mental health” has become, in a few weeks, an issue on the political agenda of all the ministries of the new government – starting with Health, Labor, Education, Housing, etc.
TO “important topic”defended the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, on Thursday, October 10, beginning this marathon day marked by the presentation of two budget texts, with a trip to Vienna on this topic. Mental health will be “great national cause” of the year 2025. Of which act.
And yet, behind this political communication, a reservation is heard in circles of psychiatrists: doesn’t putting the focus on mental health risk relegating psychiatry, its establishments and its patients to the shadows?
The semantic battle is not new, but neither is it trivial. The notion of mental health emerged in the 1960s, when until then only people spoke of psychiatry, asylums or “mental hygiene.” It is the psychiatrists themselves who instill this new name, in an emancipatory way, to return the patient “to the city.” In the 1980s, doctors again proposed replacing psychiatric hospitals with public mental health facilities, as would be the case in the following decade.
A “state of well-being”
But gradually, mental health will go far beyond the medical field and encompass more and more dimensions: in the 2000s, the World Health Organization defined it as an essential component of health, as a “a state of well-being that allows everyone to develop their potential, cope with the normal difficulties of life, and work successfully and productively”. At the risk of muddying the waters, opening the field considerably, as other authorities will continue to do.
Today, the term “poor” mental health, or mental health “disorders,” can refer to people suffering from insomnia or anxiety, as well as schizophrenic or bipolar patients, hyperactive schoolchildren, young people with suicidal thoughts, and exhausted employees. . . The avalanche of figures presented in the public debate reflects this same vagueness. From one report to another, or depending on the actors who speak, we are talking about 1 person in 3, 1 in 4, 1 in 5… During the year, during their life, occasionally or in the long term: all estimates seem possible .
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