C ike some of you know, I'm doing my internship responsibilities within a mobile psychiatric instability, as there officially since the 'circular 23 November 2005 on the management of mental health needs of people experiencing poverty and exclusion and the implementation of specialized mobile team psychiatry '. This course allows me to support people in the street suffering from psychosis: schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorders, etc. ... and this, in various contexts. In the street, in hospital, in a home with low-threshold, and finally home ... Mobile is not just anyone!
Before turning to what concerns me today, I have a quick reminder of what psychosis, for those who do not know. To do it quickly, we can say it differs from neurosis. I will not go into details (but this may be a future article) and you simple definitions, taken from the Concise Oxford Dictionary of 2006.
Neurosis means a mental condition disturbing bit of personality and social life, and whose subject is conscious.
Psychosis, by contrast, is a mental disorder characterized by profound alteration of personality and intellectual functions, and the fact that the subject is unaware of his condition.
In approaching this question, some features are highlighted but it is important to consider that each person lives his sickness in a unique way :
- Delusions: disturbance in the functioning of thought, ideas that conflict with external reality
- The sense of fragmentation: anxiety about one's body and feeling that there are no boundaries between self
- and other hallucinations: the subject believes to perceive by sight, hearing or smelling something that does not exist
- etc. ...
Psychosis best known for schizophrenia, but there are others: the hallucinatory psychosis, paranoia, manic depression ...
Although this brief reminder, we can easily realize that the existence of the disease can disrupt daily life and social person. Some of them, therefore symptoms of the disease, eventually isolate themselves, wander, travel ... There is even talk of "pathological trip. Voices or voices that threaten tired. Then they fled.
The person may also sever its ties to avoid social embarrassment. Or because she feels threatened. So many stories, experiences, feelings ...
We, mobile team, we sometimes encounter these people on the street. In the wandering pathological. Inertia or because the wandering nowhere. Among the various devices that are attached to the street team, there is a welcoming place to shelter those who need it. This place bets on the community to provide a therapy that does not speak its name. A place where nobody is making dinner, where nobody does the household where no one dictates rules too strict. Oh sure, a residence contract is signed and there are some requirements: do not endanger the group does not host and outsiders participate in the weekly community meeting. That's it. The
people here at home and organize themselves as they want / can. The area will be adapted to the temporality of people who sometimes have fifteen street behind them. So if people want to eat couscous at 3am, you can. If they want to recreate the street in their bedroom, it is possible. If they do not want to wash, they can.
Personally, I believe in this idea of unconditional. Even if I, with my lifestyle, my experiences, my performances, I may have difficulty entering the premises by the time I find it really good in the sense that this place is and will be what people want it to be. So of course, little by little he has been institutionalized to obtain financing but at heart, the mind resists.
community to survive, so. To help each other sometimes. One to tell the other " Hey friend! " with a nod to that other corner when capsized. But the community as the ultimate symbol of social ties. Such other times threatening.
Florian * Because there who can do no more, who feels that a malevolent force is here. Yes, something in him tells him to flee this place. So he goes walking ... Went to the hospital and asked to be hospitalized. It's been days since he said he had enough. As the days go by, her features are widening, not least his legs hold. He stopped eating, not drinking more. He walks. To escape this place where prevailing bad air. But now that's it, he left. It was probably too difficult for him.
Then today, I also crossed that Fernando thinks his body is a guinea pig, a hosted wanted to kill him this morning and that other men will steal his bones and his eyes. He keeps screaming that there will be mess. He says he will leave tomorrow because he can not see other men. In his flood of words messy, he said he wants to be hospitalized. Ah yes ...
and then, Flavien fails to subside. He thinks we will review the High Court because we are all pimps here. He went to the feds and it will not happen like that. He shouts. Besides that Fernand howls as it feels the mess.
Both have drawn. They are dressed in several layers of clothing despite the heat. Both can not be seen. They struggle, perhaps, within this spirit that makes them prisoner.
Turning his head, I saw Michael talking alone. I'd never seen one and talk contact, as it does now, the invisible in front of him.
So naturally I ask the collective. Wonder if it has no sense of persecution at times. In any case, during difficult times. These moments where the visible becomes invisible. These moments where two cross without seeing their only howl delirium. These moments when the collective is composed of units of bubbles where one person enters a time. Either is the subject of delirium.
Must respond to requests for admission, considering that the person knows his disease and knows what is good for her? I wonder.
Compared with hospitalizations under stress (compelling need to act caregivers?), Direct requests of people ask me. Does isolation, at some point, can not relieve them? Not the forced isolation. That helps to recover possession of oneself, to come together. Because in the frenzy, there is always an element of truth. The application for admission does not it part of a truth valid for one person at a given time?
At the same time, this community space maintains the thread of life. With fragility but the daily holds. Maybe Florian return when he will be found, maybe Fernando will get better with those he likes about this place. Maybe Flavien, tomorrow I will smile and talk about " peace, sleeping and living weapon" to which he aspires. A few days ago, when we made an exit, he said, "It's so wonderful is so beautiful, I feel very happy" ... Today when I asked him how he had experienced that day, he got yelled: " was too good because the girls are listening, respecting, so voila! " with a scowl that might scare some passers misinformed about mental illness ... But that's another debate!
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Edit 13/07/2010: Fernand was not any better today. I told him that a place was available for him if he still wished to be hospitalized. He opened his backpack and piles of garbage inside, I pulled out a faded pink. I placed in the water telling him my gratitude. A part of him which remains here. His gesture to him as the ultimate resistance.
* All names have been changed course
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Edit 13/07/2010: Fernand was not any better today. I told him that a place was available for him if he still wished to be hospitalized. He opened his backpack and piles of garbage inside, I pulled out a faded pink. I placed in the water telling him my gratitude. A part of him which remains here. His gesture to him as the ultimate resistance.
* All names have been changed course
