“Between Covid, war and crisis, families struggle to treat the sick”

Originally the Covid-19 pandemic, which swept people’s lives like a tsunami. Then the war in the heart of Europe. And at the same time the difficult phase on the economic front that was generated in the wake of these events. “Families are increasingly tried. There is growing discomfort. The impact is both on the psychological front and on that of the management capacity of everyday problems. And the patients are also at the expense. All neurologists who work on both the a territory that in hospitals have seen a great increase in social unease. Neurological patients are patients in general suffering from chronic diseases. And, to give an example, it once happened that, after being hospitalized for the treatment of an acute event, “then the patient would go home. Now this ‘protective structure’ of the family is failing and there are more and more cases of patients who are unable to return to their homes, because their family members”, tried by the difficulties of these devastating years , “I am no longer able” to take care of it. To draw the picture at Adnkronos Salute is Alfredo Berardelli, president of the Italian Society of Neurology (Sin), full professor of neurology, Department of human neuroscience, Policlinico Umberto I, Sapienza University of Rome. “What I am describing is a general concept that does not concern a specific disease, but concerns all chronic neurological diseases, diseases such as stroke”, stroke, “degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and many others”. Families “are tested by the pandemic. Even economically, and they have become less ready. So there is actually a considerable difficulty, something that was absolutely not seen in previous years”. “After the pandemic – says President Sin – there has been a worsening. The consumption of psychotropic drugs has also increased, there are data that indicate it, but what has increased in general is social unease. And it has increased because economic difficulties have also increased. This can be seen in an emblematic way on this lower response by families “to the problems of very complex patients such as neurological ones. The Italian family, Berardelli continues in his reflection, “has always been a family that welcomed, now everything has become much more difficult for these people. Very often, hospitalized patients are unable to send them home and we are forced to make requests in the long-term care, RSA and so on, with longer and longer times than before. And with a psychological impact also for patients “. The war in Ukraine, a conflict a few thousand kilometers from Italy, which has affected people a lot, “is a more recent event, but surely this too will have a psychological impact and of insecurity and uncertainty towards the future, aggravating a situation. which had already become more serious before “, concludes the specialist.