On January 26, 2023, the Court of Cassation transmitted two new priority questions of constitutionality (QPC) to the Constitutional Council relating, on the one hand, to lack of information given to the patient from the start of an isolation measure – contention on his rights and remedies, and, on the other hand, on the absence of mandatory representation by a lawyer during a judicial review on filer (without hearing) of these measures. In the context, a hearing was held on March 23, in which participated in particular the Circle of reflection and proposals for action on psychiatry (CRPA). The association recalls the chaotic course of the law, and points out that the CC rules for the 10th time on the psychiatric question… Press release.
Article L 3222-5-1 of the Public Health Code relating to isolation and restraint in psychiatry (to read this article of law, click on this link) was censored twice by way of QPC on June 19, 2020 and June 4, 2021 ; but also on a third occasion on the occasion of a parliamentary referral to the Constitutional Council relating to the law on the financing of social security for 2022.
The one-and-a-half-hour hearing took place on Tuesday March 21 with no less than eight organizations intervening in support of the applicants: the CRPA, the Bars of Hauts-de-Seine and Seine-St-Denis, the National Conference of Bars, the Law and Psychiatry Lawyers Association, as well as the Syndicate of the Judiciary, the Syndicate of Lawyers of France and the Syndicate of Psychiatry.
This procedure is, to say the least, solemn. Indeed if it is necessary to come back three times in three years before the Constitutional Council by way of QPC on the unconstitutionality of the legislation relating to isolation and restraint in psychiatry, it is for good that the Government, the Parliament and the holders of institutional power in the matter have not intended to take a clear interest in this subject until now..
With the exception of the traceability of isolation and restraint adopted by amendment of PS deputy Denys Robilard within the framework of the health law of January 26, 2016 (click on this link), all of the reforms concerning the fundamental rights of psychiatric patients under duress since 2010 have been adopted by the Government and Parliament under the constraint of censorship decisions taken by the Constitutional Council. It rules this month for the tenth time since the establishment of the QPC in March 2010 on the psychiatric issue…
It is thus acquired and common knowledge (to use a concept that has allowed many people to be interned in psychiatry since the law of June 30, 1838) that the question of the fundamental rights of people hospitalized under duress and treated in a psychiatric environment is a non-subject… (… )
