What is the “hospitalism syndrome” that some babies may suffer from at birth?

This is a heart wrenching article. The Figaro journalist Agnès Leclair published, on August 2, a deciphering of a little-known phenomenon: that of infants with severe depression syndrome following their placement for many months in hospital, for lack of having had a place in the nursery.

Newborns who need psychic and affective “resuscitation”

As we can read in the article by Agnès Leclair, many infants after birth must spend weeks or even months in hospitals, waiting to be placed in an overcrowded, understaffed nursery. It is a reality in France, according to the departments, the services are saturated.

Childhood social assistance (ASE) does not have the necessary means to accommodate all abandoned newborns in France, and some very young children have to stay in the hospitals where they were born, while waiting to be placed.

Some babies can, in certain cases, leave with their parents, but the latter being sometimes themselves in great psychological difficulty (delivery following a denial of pregnancy, family violence, etc.), the return home can take time. , or not take place at all.

But even if these babies are not abused in hospitals, they may be victims of a syndrome that was common during the post-war period, that of hospitality.

As explained in the Figaro article, the hospitalism syndrome is “a form of depression linked to emotional deprivation and the absence of an attachment figure in the context of a long stay in hospital or placement”

This particular form of depression was first described by psychiatrist René Spitz in 1946.

In the article, child psychiatrist Daniel Rousseau provides details on the symptoms of these babies who “need intense psychic, emotional and sometimes medical ‘resuscitation'” after being abandoned:

“They often have weight delays, untreated health problems, multiple deficiencies. Some have experienced terrible emotional deprivation. Their needs are enormous. These are children who can start vomiting when you turn away from them, for example. There are others that we don’t hear, who don’t ask for their bottles, don’t cry, who have let go on the relational level. »

Daniel Rousseau for Le Figaro

For more information on the tensions of existing places in nurseries, which vary between French departments, you can read the full article by Agnès Leclair in Le Figaro.

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Photo credit image of one: nenovbrothers