The distress of Dominique B., mother of a psychotic patient: “His life in a closed unit is nothingness”
Testimony: While mental health has been declared a major national cause for 2025, people are speaking out. But for some patients, severely affected by psychiatric illness, the taboo and social invisibility remain. This is Tristan's story, told by his mother, Dominique B. At 32, hospitalized under duress in the difficult-to-treat unit in Villejuif, the young man is deprived of everything.
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"My son Tristan's story is one of a slow descent into hell: a series of periods of crisis, hospitalizations, different diagnoses piling up on top of each other, different treatments, tried, replaced, corrected, with cascading side effects. Little by little, Tristan was taken out of the healthcare system and found himself in a prison setting.
He currently lives in Pavilion 38 of the Unit for Difficult Patients (UMD) in Villejuif, near Paris. Today, it's as if he's no longer a person, a zombie, who has lost all reason to live. He's deprived of everything. And he's criticized every day for his inappropriate behavior... It's a bit like accusing a cripple of not running. Tristan is sick, he's been locked up in a UMD since 2023, locked with a double lock...
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