The impossibility of being in contact with family members, coupled with uncertainty about the outcome of the disease, can be factors of anguish, fears and concerns for both the person affected by Covid-19 and their family members. To offer emotional support to patients and relatives, mental health professionals at Unicamp are providing virtual care to these people.
When a patient is hospitalized for Covid-19 at the Hospital de Clínicas (HC), points out Renata Azevedo, head of the Department of Medical Psychology and Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM) at Unicamp, an attempt is made to contact the family by telephone , explaining the possibility of assistance. In addition, an informative video about the proposal is sent. “We contacted the family, made an invitation, talking about emotional support from a distance, mainly because they cannot visit their families and this creates a lot of anguish. This is the proposal: that we can serve them to give a little comfort to hospitalized family members and also to patients”.
Five Psychiatry residents and two professors, Renata Azevedo and Clarissa de Rosalmeida Dantas, provide consultations, which can be scheduled between 8am and 22pm. Due to the impossibility of face-to-face contact, everything is done virtually.
Expansion of the support network
The work, as Renata explains, is the result of the expansion of support network which had already been serving health professionals at Unicamp's HC since March, called Caring for those who care, linked to the Virtual Support for Healthcare Professionals (GAPS), which also includes professor Rosana Onocko-Campos.
In the scope of mental health, there are still two other fronts of action, in addition to care for health professionals and patients and families. They are: the Balint Group, coordinated by FCM professor Roosevelt Cassorla, and the group Online Psychoanalytic Listening Services - Covid-19, coordinated by FCM professor Mário Eduardo Pereira and psychoanalyst Francisco Capoulate.
In the first group, aimed at mental health professionals, the focus is on discussing clinical cases and related emotional issues. In the second, the objective is to offer care to health professionals in general. The professionals who carry out this work also provide backup in case more professionals are needed to provide services to other support networks.
For the teacher, strengthening mental health care at this time is essential. “Sometimes the pandemic passes, or is reorganized in some way, and the aspects that mark mental health remain. There are already experiences in other countries suggesting that it is essential to couple general health measures, which are fundamental, to mental health issues to deal with insecurities, doubts, uncertainties”, analyzes Renata.
