2024-10-28 04:30:00
Her fingers form a gun which she points at her temple, then she mimes pulling the trigger and the explosion of her head. “This is what I wanted to do after the birth of my child,” she states, barely beginning the conversation. Opposite, on the damp terrace, another patient pulls on the butt of her rolled cigarette and nods: “I didn’t think you could want to die so much after having given life. »
From the sixth floor of the Maison Blanche building of the Bichat-Claude Bernard hospital (Paris 18th), these two new mothers overlook their “comrades” hospitalized in the general psychiatric services on the lower levels, who wander in blue paper pajamas in the middle of withered plants. “It was by seeing them that I understood that it was still psychiatry here”continues the smoker, Stéphanie, 40 years old (the first names of the patients met have been changed).
Wanting to die from having given life: it is around this tension that all the care work of the parent-baby hospitalization unit (UHPB) of the University Hospital Group (GHU) Paris psychiatry and neuroscience revolves. Created in 1994, this small service, one of the few in France, can accommodate five to seven mothers and their newborns, as well as fathers who require it. “State-of-the-art psychiatry”, as explained by the head of the UHPB, Doctor Cécile Corfdir, to respond to this statistic which impacts the world of obstetrics: maternal suicide – occurring in the first year after childbirth – now represents the leading cause of maternal mortality in childbirth, due to somatic causes such as delivery hemorrhage or eclampsia.
“A lot of requests and few places”
Every Monday afternoon, the white and purple coats crowd into the break room. In front of Cécile Corfdir, a pile of printed emails, so many requests for entry. “We received news, a baby placed in a nursery. The family is preparing to go before the children’s judge, but the father is super rigid from what I understand. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do anything. » She continues reading in front of the team. “A real mother-baby relationship problem but too bad, the baby is 10 months old” : the service cannot accommodate walking children. Next request: “A solo PMA abroad, with a very anxious mother whose own mother is suicidal and had cancer”she really wants to do well, but can’t do it. Then: an unwanted child with a traumatic birth, the parents are unsuitable, “emergencies require an assessment of the situation before reporting or not”. Finally, an unwanted pregnancy from a woman so sad she doesn’t change her daughter’s diapers enough. The father is not there, he spends his life at the gym. “As usual, we have a lot of requests and few places,” reacts Margaux Xicola, one of the team’s childcare nurses.
You have 82.6% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
1730097707
#easy #admit #suicide #weve #thought
