It is already confirmed: the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, confirmed on Tuesday the 1stAhem October, during his general policy declaration before the National Assembly, to make mental health the “great cause” of the year 2025. He had already spoken in favor, on September 22, during his first televised intervention. Bringing a personal touch to this commitment: Matignon’s new tenant had highlighted his mother’s investment, for thirty-five years, as president, in Savoy, of the National Union of Families and Friends of the Mentally Ill. An establishment for people suffering from mental disorders bears her name, in Aix-les-Bains: the Denise-Barnier residence.
Those who follow the debates on these issues know that this concern for mental health has already been expressed on numerous occasions under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. With one last missed appointment: a National Council for Refoundation, promised by the government for mid-June, was canceled at the last moment, after the dissolution of the National Assembly. Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, in his general policy speech in January, also mentioned young people’s mental health as a priority.
Specifically, what will change? The “great cause” label allows you to obtain free broadcasts of messages on public television and radio. And to highlight a topic: in 2024, the Olympic year, physical and sporting activity, or in the past, gender equality, autism, the fight against violence against women, cancer… The labeling is claimed for months by a large number of people. collective that brings together around twenty actors from mental health, psychiatry and the medical-social sector, representing some three thousand organizations.
A “real impact”
“Awareness campaigns of this scale, as there may have been in Anglo-Saxon countries, have a real impact, defends Angèle Malâtre-Lansac, general delegate of the Alliance for Mental Health (one of the organizations of the collective) and former deputy director of health at the Montaigne Institute. They allow progress in access to rights, destigmatization or the fight against discrimination, and can be the beginning of real change in society. »
“There are 13 million people affected by a mental disorder each year, one in four people is affected during their lifetime: this seems to us to be sufficient justification for a government to confront the issue”agrees Jean-Philippe Cavroy, general delegate of Mental Health France, another key member of the group.
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