On the right bank of the Seine there is a boat, it’s called l’Adamant and is a day center for people with mental disorders. Moored a few steps from the Gare de Lyon in Paris, it is an innovative wooden structure, designed in 2010 by a team of architects in collaboration with patients and caregivers.
There are no walls that divide, doors or offices closed, the center was designed to have no barriers. The windows have wooden panels that can be lifted and open up to the river, its sounds, its calm rhythm and the reflection of the sunlight. Patients love to go to l’Adamant, a beautiful open spacewhich looks more like an artist’s studio than a psychiatric center, and being in contact with thewaterwhich has a calming effect.
Su l’Adamant there are no white coats, there are no external signals that allow to clearly distinguish those who treat from the patients. The place stimulates communication and meeting: there is a vast program of workshop creativi (painting, music, cinema, drawing, ceramics…), outdoor activities and events. The projects are discussed by the patients together with the treating staff, because everyone, both caregiver and guest of the centre, is called to “building together” daily life.
Adamant sees 30 to 40 patients a day and has a treating staff of about 20: nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists, a psychiatrist, hospital services officials and various external collaborators.
It is not a closed, isolated structure, is part of Psychiatric and psychological center of Paris Central, which also includes 2 Psychological Medical Centers (Centres Médicaux Psychologiques, CMP), a mobile team, and two units within the Esquirol psychiatric hospital, formerly known as the Charenton Hospice, a hospital for psychiatric patients. The latter is in turn linked to the Saint-Maurice hospital complex. Therefore the Adamant is not an isolated place because all the connected units that make up the group form a network in which patients and treating staff are constantly on the move, and each of them is able to find an individual solution among the different offers.
Nicholas Philibertfamous French documentary maker and director, followed the patients in the psychiatric day hospital for 7 months, creating a documentary which gives voice to the guests of the centre, their stories, their wounds and their desires. On the Adamant won theGolden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2023 and was presented by the director in Bologna in an absolute Italian premiere on the opening night of Biography Film Festivalthe international film festival entirely dedicated to biographies and life stories, this year in its nineteenth edition.
The team that manages the center is one of those who resist as best they can deterioration and dehumanization of the psychiatric systemas stated in the press release of film. On the Adamant he invites us to come on board and meet the patients and carers who invent the life of this center every day.
The Adamant puts the principles of institutional psychotherapya method developed in the 1960s, which consists of rendering i patients “co authors of their own treatment”as he explains Linda De Zitter, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who was involved in the creation of the centre: «for months», explains Nicolas Philibert, «patients and doctors met with a team of architects to define the key elements of the Adamant. And what started out as a dream utopian has finally become true»
Faced with a psychiatry that has been in crisis for 25 years and abandoned by the public authorities, “Adamant is a place that remains alive, a very creative place in the practice of human psychiatry, which puts people at the centre, and focuses not only on the administration of medicines but also on relations“spiega Nicolas Philibert. The film reverses the image of “invisibility” of people with mental disorders, often portrayed in a dehumanizing wayand gives humanity and centrality to patients, «who, even if they are sick, are aware of their weaknesses and their psychoses».
It is not the first time that Nicolas Philibert has made a film on the world of psychiatry. In 1995 he turned The least of it, a documentary that tells the daily life of patients and staff in the La Borde psychiatric clinic.
«I have always been very attentive and interested in psychiatry. It’s a very stimulating world, since it continually pushes us to think about ourselves, our limits, our defects, and how the world works. Psychiatry is a magnifying glass that tells us a lot about our humanity,” says Nicolas Philibert.
“On the Adamant it’s a film about all of us because madness is part of humanity».
«On the Adamant it is not a film of denunciation», explains Nicolas Philibert, «but a documentary that shows a place that resists, that remains creative. It is a film that goes into the field and shows them thereexperience of a structure that works very well».
Nicolas Philibert’s gaze is attentive and sensitive, lets the patients’ thoughts emerge, without forcing them. The guests of the center open up, talk about their fears, their illness, but also their passions, such as the passion for art, which can be expressed in a space thus conceived, open to the outside, without barriers, without foreclosures to the eye.
«Healing is not just giving medicines, anxiolytics», says Nicolas Philibert, «it is a whole set of things, cure is to try to renew a bond of help, try to help patients reconnect with the world».
Opening photo and first photo inside the article: Adamant. © Hôpitaux de Saint-Maurice
The other photos: courtesy of the Biografilm Festival press office