Due to overcrowded nurseries and the lack of staff within the Children’s Social Aid, babies awaiting placement develop depressive symptoms, grouped under the term “hospitalism syndrome”, as develops an article published in Le Figaro.
This syndrome is nothing new, as it was formulated after the Second World War (in 1946) by a psychiatrist, named René Spitz. According to theUniversalis encyclopediathe term allows “describe the alteration of the body associated with a long stay in a hospital or the harmful effects of placement in an institution during infancy. This last situation is characterized by an interruption of the relationship already established between the mother and the child, by an insufficiency in the new affective exchanges and stimulations (unsatisfactory maternal substitute or multiple substitutes) and by a difficulty for the subject to identify with a stable image.”
Various reactions in depressed babies
These symptoms, detected in times of war, continue to exist, as explained by the Figaro : for lack of space with the ASE, babies sometimes wait for long periods of time in the hospital (sometimes months), before being adopted or picked up by their parents.
The depression they develop is manifested, according to child psychiatrist Daniel Rousseau, by deficiencies (physical and emotional), weight loss or even health problems. This is explained by babies who can’t stand being away and who start vomiting in the absence of an adult, or on the contrary babies who are in a form of lethargy and do not even want to eat. The doctor interviewed explains that they then need a “psychic resuscitation“.
Sources:
- The drama of “hospitalism” in placed babies, Le FigaroAugust 2, 2022
