Patients with acquired brain injury (DCA) for stroke or head injury are a caregiver, frequently, a person in your family is usually a woman around 60 years of age who is relative of the patient and half of them suffer from depression or anxiety, the study ‘Epidemiology DCA: The Global Burden of Acquired Brain Injury in the Basque Country and Navarra’.
“When the person with DCA receives the discharge, comes home from his injuries healed, but not rehabilitated, and is the family who has to make daily care, without adequate training or be psychologically ready for it,” said Amalia Dieguez , chair of the Spanish Federation for Brain Injury (FEDACE) and member of the organizing committee and the Brain Injury Family Week takes place this Thursday, March 11 at the Hospital Beata María Ana de Madrid.
Therefore Dieguez stressed that “families require care that is not interrupted, specialized, from the emergency room to the living room of his house.”
This conference organized by the Network Menni Brain Injury Services, FEDACE and the Department of Basic Psychology II, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, intended as a forum for participants to share experiences and reflect on how to improve care for families people with brain damage.
Until these associations reach families with squealed such as isolation, exclusion, mistrust, false expectations, disorientation, “says Dieguez who said that” all these side effects are preventable if they had been treated properly from the beginning. “
In this regard, he stressed that the treatment of families with DCA “requires an approach as early as possible, to avoid consequences and complications that otherwise, the family dragged throughout the rehabilitation process.
This congress is also “recognition of the role of the family as a fundamental support in situations of illness or disability, because unfortunately there has been a historical divide between families and professionals,” says Dieguez.
In addition, Dieguez claimed as necessary “preventive policies to curb the incidence of DCA. It is urgent to work on lines of research and open discussion forums, like the one we find, for the treatment of those affected and their families.”
Moreover, according to Dr. Jose Ignacio Quemada, Menni Network Director of Brain Injury Services and member of the organizing committee of the day, “the professional who receives them may lack global vision and not have to be a person psychologically very sophisticated. Furthermore, experience anxiety about the limits of his knowledge and is not immune to the emotional impact that produced the dramas of other human beings. “