Thank you for your support

THANK YOU

To each of you who have supported an extraordinary, unprecedented, and deeply meaningful defense of the psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis offered at the 388, Gifric and the staff of the 388 would like to express our gratitude. We do so on behalf of the users especially, who were very touched by your efforts.

Anyone who has read and reread the letters you sent to the Minister, which were published on the le388.ca website, has been stunned and shocked by the Minister's inertia and by the lack of consideration shown by CIUSSS managers for the importance of the theoretical and clinical advances in treatment developed over more than 40 years by Gifric at the 388.

Thousands of signatures from citizens, specialists, researchers, clinicians and academics from Quebec, Europe, the U.S. and South America testified to a creation that neither Quebec nor the broader world of those who work with psychosis can afford to lose. And yet, despite the publication at the end of June 2024 of 388's clinical results involving over 200 patients who had engaged in psychoanalytic treatment with great success, the Minister of Health decided not to intervene to prevent the Center's closure.

Over the past 40 years, several closure attempts have been avoided thanks to the intervention of health ministers who, on the basis of the convincing clinical results they had observed, acted to preserve this treatment for the citizens of Quebec. This is the first time that a Health Minister has refused to intervene, relying instead on the decisions of administrators whose official reasons for acting have remained obscure, shifting and arbitrary. These decisions have been made without taking into consideration either the uniqueness of clinical results or the renewed psychoanalytical clinic that ensures these results. The pretext that costs were too high was also not credible, since they corresponded to $55/patient/day for a Center that has the capacity to offer 24/7 services to a hundred or so patients — especially when we consider the savings this treatment brings as a result of fewer hospitalizations and less use of the emergency room.

The lack of respect and empathy for users and staff, as well as the brutality and haste with which administrators acted with the closure, bear witness to irrational ideological reasons that remain unspoken. At the heart of this decision is a battle that has been waged against psychoanalysis for some thirty years.  Users were well aware of this when the administrators who called them to announce the Centre's closure led them to believe that they would be redirected to equivalent services—or even better! They were outraged to hear such talk, knowing full well how much they would lose with the end of their treatment at 388, most of them having previously experienced the services they were now being promised. They made a point of clearly identifying this loss in their testimonies and to the authorities to whom they appealed—stressing that they were doing so both for themselves and for those who, after them, will not have access to what saved them.

The results obtained at the 388 suggest that psychotics can undergo an analytical treatment and emerge from psychosis. This seems to be unacceptable in a context where psychosis is conceived of as an illness caused by brain dysfunctions that can only be remedied by the drug treatments promised by scientific research. Anyone who takes the trouble to listen to what psychotics have to say knows from experience the limits of the effects of these treatments on their discomfort, as well as the debilitating effects they have on their lives. The closure of 388 testifies to a need to erase results that call into question such a biomedical approach to psychosis and the services that come with it.

The 388 has been closed since March 13. But a team that was comprised several years ago is already hard at work, drawing on the expertise developed in the psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis to recreate an alternative for our co-citizens suffering from psychosis. In this respect, what you have written and developed in your letters of support cannot be erased or denied. It constitutes references that are now accessible and decisive in the eyes of those who might agree to support a new life to be given to the psychoanalytic treatment of psychoses in Quebec and elsewhere. Your words have also become such an important support for all those of you who, for years, have worked tirelessly to develop more humane, community-based alternatives to bio-medical treatment.

For all this, and for all those young people for whom your support has been heard as an immense sign of hope, we offer you our deepest thanks!

Willy Apollon, philosophe, psychanalyste

Danielle Bergeron, psychiatre, psychanalyste

Lucie Cantin, psychologue, psychanalyste