[Characteristics of patients hospitalized in a specialized hospital center after after attempted suicide]. / Caractéristiques des patients hospitalisés dans un centre hospitalier spécialisé après une tentative de suicide.

Authors have counted, during a period of one year, the totality of patients having been admitted to the Centre Hospitalier Spécialisé de la Savoie (Chambéry) following a volunteer medicinal intoxication; 227 patients have been thus included, this type of acting out concerning third more women than men. The higher impact is found in young adults (20-40 years). Professional inactivity appears as a favoring factor, while the way of life (bachelor or in couple) does not seem to have consequence on the frequency of occurrence of the suicidal attempts. Relapses are numerous, and happen in most cases during the year. Concerning used medicines, they have been generally prescribed by a practitioner or a psychiatrist. The prominent fact is the presence of a very short period between the prescription, the deliverance of the medicine and the acting out. Plurimedicinal intoxications are increasingly frequent, with often concurrent absorption of alcohol. The diminution of the use of barbiturics in ambulatory medicine to the profit of other molecules, and especially the benzodiazepines, has reduced the frequency of their use in volunteers medicinal intoxications. Benzodiazepines are the most employed medicines in this type of acting out. This epidemiological and toxicological study confirms that used substances during volunteer medicinal intoxication are a reflection of the general medicinal consumption.

[About ethics in psychiatry and psychiatrists facing ethics]. / De l'éthique en psychiatrie au psychiatre face à l'éthique.

The plug in account of the suffering, notably psychological, in a consultation, puts the problem of the relationship between suffering and ethics. However, the originality of the ethical step is justly not to be confined to the social norm conformism, but being specific to the individual dimension. The psychiatric pathology offers in this area of particularities interesting. The neurotic, as the obsessed, suffering inwardly pathological manifestations that he judges absurd, replies to the medical moral in asking a care. The psychotic, which projects his suffering on the other, does not feel sick, requests no therapeutic assistance. As such he contests the medical order in an immoral position by definition, and the patient represents from then on a social and medical scandal. In front of a such clinical diversity, we can easily underline that approaching the theme of ethics in psychiatry isn't a well-off exercise, and necessitates a precise locating registered in the history of the patient.