Sainte Anne Psychiatric Hospital in Paris, A Hidden Sanctuary of Nature and Art.

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KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA-Chapelle_du_Centre_Hospitalier_Sainte-Anne_construite_(1869)_par_l'architecte_Charles_Auguste_QuestelKONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAKONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERASainte Anne street namesKONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAKONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA Saint Anne nude 2 KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
Sainte Anne bees
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA Sainte Anne flowers 12 KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA Sainte Anne nude Sainte Anne plaque KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAA haven of beautiful peace amongst flowers and statues is tucked away inside the walls of  Hôpital Sainte Anne, which is the main psychiatric hospital of Paris.  Nature and art covers the whole hospital campus, offering visual stimulation of beauty as part of the healing process.

The gardens are so lovely that guided tours take place on the weekend of Heritage Days.  There are some old species of trees, plants and flowers to discover that are no longer cultivated.

Sainte Anne is composed of numerous pavilions all individually nestled in abundant park like settings, taking up a huge part of the 14 th arrondissement of Paris.    The hospital offers both inpatient and outpatient psychiatric treatment to adults, with separate units for children and  adolescents.

It is the only hospital to offer a psychiatric emergency service that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  A huge humanitarian plus, it that all psychiatric emergency consultations are totally free to all and anyone.                                 

The hospital additionally has  services of neurology and neurosurgery, and is the main center of psychiatric research in France. Inserm, which is the French institute of Health and Medical Research occupies a corner of the complex.

High old walls surround the whole campus giving it somewhat the look of a monastery.   The Saint Anne campus additionally has its own nursing school and a small but excellent museum of psychiatry.

The hospital has an interesting history that presented some of the firsts of what now constitutes standard approaches in the treatment of the mentally ill.   Fortunately the hospital has conserved its architectural integrity, by renovating the interiors, rather than razing, and adding only a few modern ones over the years.

The intriguing history of Sainte Anne goes back to the 13 th century, when a hospital was built on the present site.  In 1651 it was named after the patron saint of Anne of Austria, the mother of King Louis the 14th.

At that time it provided a working farm for the many mentally ill who came over from Hospital Bicêtre.  Those who suffered from mental disorders were  called les aliénés, or alienated ones.  A rather pertinent term at that time, when the mentally ill  were often separated from society in shame, to be  hidden and locked away.

There were not really any effective treatments back then, so I suspect getting the mentally ill to till the soil, was probably the most therapeutic treatment offered. Fresh air, sunshine, flowers, cultivating vegetables and fruits, and milking cows all have inherent healing properties and certainly made them feel productive and more normal.

After another damaging fire occurred at Hôpital Dieu, the city needed to farm out patients and Saint Anne became more of a working hospital again, and was completely reconstructed by 1788.

In 1863, Napoleon designated it to be a psychiatric hospital, reincarnating its long history of therapeutic service to the mentally ill of the past.  A few years later, the hospital expanded its services to include dental surgery and care, an obstetrical wing and a parent child facility that provided a more holistic care to psychiatric patients of Paris.

By 1908, the hospital encouraged patients to put their skills to work , be it carpentry, painting, gardening, etc.  Once again employing the therapeutic attributes of what we now call occupational therapy.

Some of the turn of the century psychiatric treatments seem bizarre and dangerous, and the majority were only minimally effective.  Warm or hot baths were used to sooth anxiety and cold baths, including wrapping patients in cold sheets to break psychotic episodes.

Valentin Magnan, who practiced there was a proponent of not using restraints and was the first to associate alcoholism and other mental illness as having hereditary tendencies.  He was also the first to encourage compassionate care and dialogue with the patient at bedside.

Neurosyphilis was treated by injecting the malaria organism into the patient, producing a very high fever that usually killed the syphilis bacterium, but then they had to be given quinine to get rid of the malaria!

Insulin injections that suddenly dropped blood sugar to coma levels were used to treat schizophrenics   Sainte Anne was the first hospital in France to use electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, which did prove effective and is still used today as a last resort in treatment resistive depression.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II, the Germans turned Sainte Anne into a military hospital, discharging the hundreds of mentally ill to survive on their own.  Those who made it to other institutions often died of starvation, like Camille Claudel.

Unknown to the Germans, was the labyrinth of long underground quarries that still are spread throughout the entire 14th arrondissement.  A brigade of physicians, who were apart of the French resistance would secretly care for some patients 30 meters below the grounds of Sainte Anne.

In 1952, Henri Laborit in collaboration with Saint Anne psychiatrists, Pierre Deniker  and Jean Delay developed the first neuroleptic, chlorpromazine, known as Thorazine.  This monumental step brought about a new era of treating psychosis still employed today with second generation antipsychotics.

Medicines and psychotherapy make up the mainstream of treatments today, but I love that Saint Anne has preserved its unique setting to provide that added plus of nature and art.

Nature works wonders as a healing agent in multiple ways.  Walking along the streets and alleys of the hospital adorned with the thick lush of flourishing green landscape is a refreshing jolt of oxygen.  The abundant colorful flowers everywhere, either framing a building or in well manicured gardens reach out to  you with their mood lifting properties.

I have often counseled patients to visit flower gardens for their antidepressant effect and for those with gardens to engage in tilling and planting. Sitting on mother earth reestablishes a powerful healing connection to our root chakra at the base of our spine and the act of planting reenacts regeneration of life.

Finding beauty, be in flowers, art, or statues reawakens and stimulates our pleasure and joy centers of our brain.  Depressives have to be taught to seek out such simple and free joys as an everyday compliment to their standard treatment already implemented.                                                                                                                                                I find that the various statues evoke struggle, pain and despair, as well as triumph and playful joy: mimicking life as it is.  The nude statues by the tennis courts remind us of our human vulnerability as well as pleasure.

I was not able to find out the history of the headless statue, but suspect that it is one of Sainte Anne, disfigured during the French revolution, as many religious ones were.  Perhaps ironically, she reflects the often stated fear patients have of “losing my mind”.

The bee hives seem to be new and I don’t know if patients are involved in honey production, but they add a true pastoral touch.  After all Sainte Anne was a working farm for the mentally ill for many years.

I love to stroll around the gardens every now and then not only for the beauty, but the lovely quiet I find inside the walls, where birds can be heard chirping, a sound usually drowned out by Parisian traffic. On a personal note, I am proud that my daughter is  psychiatric nurse there.

I hear the food is very good too, a cut above most hospital fare, with patient menus resemblant of gourmet restaurants, especially in comparison to american hospital food. There is always  a cheese course along with fresh daily delivered baguettes.    Christmas and other holiday feasts always include foie gras and oysters and even pheasant!

Those who suffer from mental afflictions not only deserve the best treatments, and food, but at Saint Anne they can bask in all the surrounding beauty, hidden within the walls. To remind patients that they were not alone in their struggle, street and alleys are all named after famous people, who have suffered from mental illness, whether they were hospitalised there or not.

Sainte Anne is truly a unique hospital, where medical science and research is nestled amongst  the peaceful and healing presence of nature and art, exactly the way it should be.   This rich heritage makes for wonderful visit, where if not for the sight of white lab jackets you could easily forget it is a hospital.

 

10 thoughts on “Sainte Anne Psychiatric Hospital in Paris, A Hidden Sanctuary of Nature and Art.”

  1. Thanks, Mom! It’s true, I do brag alot about the food they serve to the patients and personel. For lunch, sometimes I am faced with difficult choices like to have either salmon in puff pastry or pheasant with wild mushrooms sauce. Or, on holiday meals, deciding between foie gras or smoked salmon or …YES! why not have both for lunch! Hmmm, there’s the assortment of french cheeses too.

    Aside from eating well and walking around the beautiful manicured gardens, I really am blessed with a great job that I truly love!

    1. Thank you Aimee for your wonderful observations in working at this renown psychiatric hospital in Paris. Sainte Anne is likewise blessed to have someone of your therapeutic skill, and devotion to patients that you give everyday compassionate love and understanding. If only the world had more psychiatric clinicians like you!

  2. What a “unique hospital” or a resort hospital with a rich history.
    I don’t know what it is about being in gardens or even being in the forest but the therapeutic ability of mother Nature and her way to soothe the soul is amazing.and great food and art has got be a anti depressants in itself.

    1. Thank you Isham for sharing your rich knowledge about the healing aspects of nature. Sainte Anne is really a special place for nature lovers depressed or not. I love strolling around the gardens to see what is blooming. There are also some old species of plants and trees, though not all are labeled. Aimee says the gardner and landscaper, just retired, had been working there since age 18!

  3. Pauli Peterson

    There wasn’t anything romantic about my one week stay in 2002, after being arrested during a public psychotic break. I appreciated the coffee, bread and brie. Otherwise the food was scary, the chicken pink. I don’t mind institutional slop but I feared to eat the half cooked dinners. I appreciated that the staff treated you like a regular person, they treated us with polite manners and respect. During that week, there was no therapy. Just the smoky TV room. That was fine. I never found this garden you speak of, but I was sort of out of it. I did walk to a nearby park toward the end of the week, when I was better, as they kindly gave me a pass, which they did for us. I would give it an 8 star out of 10 for psych wards (just kidding), excepting the first night they locked me in a room with another female, this down the street from Sainte Anne’s: I guess to see if anything criminal stuck. They were harsh over there, as were the Paris police who arrested me, the police leaving me with various bruises and a toenail gone. At any rate, the history of Sainte Anne’s you give is of interest to me, having been sanctioned there for a week.

  4. Pauli Peterson

    Also, that first afternoon, admittedly I was out of control, but instead of putting me on a guerny with 4 point restraints, they locked me alone in a room with a view, wide leather bands on each wrist and a metal chain inserted into the leather. I was psychotic, but cognizant that these handcuffs were bizarre, frightening. I finally passed out from the drugs, worn from the futility of shaking these museum piece restraints. Europe is so much classier than the USA, hee hee.

    But as I said, the staff were great, had the best attitude, better than I’d ever seen. You just never would come across leather and metal restraints in the US. But that was adjunct, initial, seperate place from Sainte Anne’s, the fist day.

    Once I got to Sainte Anne’s everything was fine. For 2 days they heavily drugged me and I had an IV.

    So I had drug therapy only. Maybe the Frence patients had much more. I don’t speak French, so it wouldn’t have done any good. Only my doctor and social worker spoke English. They would only release me to a friend. Luckily a friend’s daughter lived in Paris so she could released me and I flew home.

    1. Dear Pauli,
      Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. I can’t imagine how scary it must have been to be sick in a foreign country and not understanding the language. Plus the cultural differences as you mentioned about the restraints. Medieval, yes ,or it can be seen as a fashion statement ( leather instead of synthetic). However, I’m glad you received good care from the staff.
      My daughter, who works in the psychiatric day hospital is usually asked to meet with any english speaking patients, but she only started in 2011.
      I hope you will someday return to Paris and be able to make up for time lost.
      Anyway welcome to my blog and hope you will find other posts that interest you!

  5. Pauli Peterson

    I have returned to Paris once with my husband since then and enjoyed it. During my stay, the language barrier was not a problem. It was the brutality of the French police and the hostility and cruelity of the intake day. Being locked in a room, alone, handcuffed, is not best practice for a person undergoing psychosis, anywhere in the world. Then being put in a jail like cell for a day and being scolded in English is not best practice. My God, it has nothing to do with culture or fashion. I haven’t lived in the US for five years, by the way.

  6. Pauli Peterson

    I have one more comment, as now and then I look Sainte Anne’s up, this is why I came to the blog, the reason. (Although the travel blogging is a delightful surprise.)

    Anyway, I’ve always wondered what exact part of the administration the initial lockup was. After the police gave me bruises and a lost toenail and
    fingernail, these wounds were not addressed until over 24 hours. First I was hours handcuffed, alone in a large room, with a view of the park. Utterly psychotic. Second, I was locked up overnight with another female. She spoke English, said she was Jewish and kept a knife in her pants, because the Muslim police in her hood hated her. I never knew if she was pychotic or this was criminal. The administrators there were fiercely hostile. Awful.

    What I always wondered: What was this place? It appeared to be on the grounds or just down the street. Someday I may find out. Maybe you know?

    And last, I will correct myself and say the French culturally, scientifically, do mental health better. This I have also heard from a friend with multiple experiences. Excepting the police and whatever the 1st lock up environment was!

    Patients were nice, bonded. Miracle: Laughter was heard. Patients were kind. That was different than the pyche ward I was sanctioned to in the US where individuals could be mean. In that US psyche ward, we were treated not so good. In Paris, there was simply an internal aura of the staff which ruled out patronizing, judging and condensension — and that was for all patients. Coffee, bread, brie and intelligence.

    However, I wonder why the Paris police stomped with jackboots on my reclined back, as I was hancuffed in the back of a van, and laughed. I wonder at the hardness of the initial lock up facility. Is that how they still treat the homeless or psychotic in Paris?

    1. Sorry for a late response Pauli, but just returned from Istanbul. I do not know where you were taken that first night, perhaps my daughter can investigate.
      Your experience with the police is awful and downright cruel and abusive. Your story underlines a much needed training for police, in all countries, on how to handle psychotic patients. Psychotic patients are extremely frightened and are in need of reassurance and protection from acting out their psychosis, which could result in harm to themselves or others. Paris has a Samu team that generally goes out to bring the homeless in danger or psychiatrically ill in for care or treatment. They do have training and I have witnessed their compassionate response in handling those in need and crisis. I feel very sorry that you were not not brought in by these benevolent professional and volunteers.

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