In Toulouse, the local mental health council at ten years old
Created in 2012, the local health contract of the mental city of Toulouse aims to facilitate the inclusion of people suffering from mental disorders and to accommodate them for access to housing, care, employment, services public.
The 33e edition of the Mental Health Information Weeks – which ends this Friday coincides with the tenth anniversary of the local mental health council (CLSM) of Toulouse. Created on the initiative of the town hall of Toulouse and Toulouse health establishments, the CLSM brings together all the players in psychiatry: users, carers, families, caregivers, associations, etc. The purpose of this network is to promote the inclusion in the city of people suffering from mental disorders but also to raise awareness among the population in order to overcome stigmatization. Pascale Finne, project manager at the municipal hygiene and health service of the Toulouse Town Hall, speaks of a “main work in the hand which makes everyone feel like an actor and gets involved”.
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A truck to meet the population
Among the priority areas of work, we find the facilitation of access to housing, access to care, to work, but also to leisure, culture and all public services.
For information, the itinerant “BlaBla Psy” truck makes it possible to meet the population. “We discuss, we advise, we guide and above all we give concrete examples of what psychological disorders can be that are ignored and which generate fears. On our last outing, we reached 60 people in half a day. You never know what will happen, sometimes people allow themselves spontaneously in what our flyers are free, sometimes they want to quickly move on but, when they take the time to discuss, we always find a resonance with the ‘ story of a loved one and everything becomes more alive, more human”, testifies Geneviève Rocques-Darroy, one of the volunteers of “BlaBla Psy” and president of the association Prevention suicide in Occitanie. The colorful truck will stop on Saturday November 26 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Alex Jany sports complex, as part of the Villes pour Tous festival.
“Mental health affects everyone. Toulouse was lucky that this contract existed long before the Covid epidemic. Without this extraordinary network, we would have been helpless in the face of the explosion of malaise, ”underlines Patricia Bez, deputy mayor of Toulouse in charge of health.
A project to expand the local mental health contract in the Toulouse metropolitan area is currently being studied.