Webclip – Psychosocial Tijuana COVID-19 – Transcript

Rot. Loc:

Auxiliary hospital unit for COVID-19
Tijuana, Mexico

Rot. Person:

Lucia Samayoa
Psychosocial Care (MSF)

Subs:

The strategy has two parts.

Our aim is to provide psychological

and psychosocial care
both for patients

and for their families.

We write a letter

in which the psychologists
introduce themselves.

As well as welcoming them

and explaining
who we are and how we work,

the letter has a photograph
of each psychologist

so the patients can put a face to them.

The letter also asks
a series of questions

in order to investigate
how the patient is doing

on an emotional level:

how they are feeling,
how well they are sleeping,

how they feel
about all they’ve been through

with COVID-19.

And then we can know
how to help them.

Some express a lot of feelings:


the fears they felt
while in hospital,

the fear that they’d never see
their family again,

the anxiety of
not being able to breathe.

We can say that
all physical conditions

have emotional repercussions.

This space we give them

gives meaning to what they’ve experienced

besides being a cathartic space.

They can get it all off their chest.

Some patients cry
during the phone call.

Their voices crack with emotion

as they realise, they really understand
everything they've been through

and that they're recovering,
that they survived.

It's important, it's super-important,

to offer psychological support

to help them recover.