Practices “from another time“: this is how the psychiatrists of the Collective 39 designate acts of restraint carried out in psychiatric hospitals. This movement, founded in 2008, presented to the Senate a conference denouncing these practices deemed to be degrading.
A “dehumanization of the sick”
The restraint consists in restricting the movements of the patients by the use of a camisole or straps attaching the person to his bed. The question of restraint currently has no legal framework and raises ethical questions, particularly relating to right to refusal of care, the freedom to come and go of the patient but also respect for the patient as a person. Psychiatrists indeed deplore on the Collective 39 site that these practices lead to “dehumanization of the sick“.”Tying up, strapping up, tying up a patient is for us an act that is not an act of care“explained Doctor Hervé Bokobza, psychiatrist and co-founder of the collective 39 on the airwaves of France Info on September 9th.
Towards a trivialization of restraint?
“We are in a system of incredible violence towards patients […] Physical restraint leads to trauma forever anchored in patients“further denounces Doctor Bokobza. These acts of restraint are currently only rarely framed by a medical prescription because they are generally used in an emergency. The group wishes to draw attention to these practices when the Senate is getting ready to study the Health bill. This indeed contains the law on the modernization of the health system, a text wishing to confer on restraint practices the status of a medical act. The psychiatrists of Collectif 39 fear that these methods will become commonplace, while other solutions could be envisaged by specifically training medical personnel.
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