“We see ourselves deprived of the hope of leaving the walls for reasons of lack of personnel”.
Locked up since 2004 in the Unit for Difficult Patients (UMD) in Cadillac (Gironde), 18 patients denounce in a letter the deterioration of their therapeutic care at the psychiatric hospital.
The initiator of this letter is none other than Romain Dupuy, the double murderer of the psychiatric hospital of Pau in 2004, recognized as irresponsible for his act (the young man then aged 21 had stabbed to death an aide- caregiver and a nurse), and placed in Cadillac ever since.
The authors of the letter deplore that the main consequence of this staff shortage is to deprive them of therapeutic outings.
"We see ourselves deprived of the hope of leaving the walls for reasons of lack of personnel", insist the signatories.
“These outings last six hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., explains Romain Dupuy.
We feel like civilians, we go shopping, we go to a restaurant.
Personally, I like to sit on the terrace of a café and observe people in the street.
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UMDs receive patients who are potentially dangerous to themselves or others and whose state of health requires intensive care and special safety measures.
Despite medical opinions favorable to his placement in a normal psychiatric unit, Romain Dupuy has remained locked up in the UMD for almost eighteen years, a sad record.
On June 9, a judge of freedoms and detention in Bordeaux considered that his maintenance was "irregular" and constituted an "infringement of the rights of the patient".