Editorial: Le Monde

• Despite advances in the perception of mental health, psychiatric disease remains a taboo.
• The treatment of severe mental disorders is riddled with contradictions, between care and confinement, and between the protection of patient rights and security.
• Public psychiatry is in crisis, with more than 20% of physician posts vacant in public hospitals.
• There is a wide disparity in psychiatric care across the country.
• Involuntary hospitalization in psychiatry has grown without sufficient oversight, although it is now subject to judicial review.
• There is a need for greater control over forced hospitalizations and the eradication of practices such as ‘mechanical restraint’, despite its lack of therapeutic value.

Conclusion: Addressing the inequality in the mental health system and reforming primitive practices is crucial to better serve the affected population.

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