Nouvelles normalités Nouvelles pathologies Nouvelles ... - Psynem

6° 6éme Congresso Congrès Européen Europeo de di Psicopatologia Psychopathologie dell’Infanzia de l’Enfance e et dell’Adolescenza
de l’Adolescence
Nuove Nouvelles normalità normalités Nuove Nouvelles patologie pathologies Nuove pratiche Nouvelles pratiques
FRIDAY, May 6 WORKSHOPS
Workshop 14 Dal prenatale alla diagnosi precoce
PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTION DURING PRENATAL DIAGNOSIS
D. Paggetti (1) , I. Lapi (2) , M. Iandolo (3)
(1) Meyer Paediatric Hospital, Florence (Florence - IT), (2) Manager of the Infant and Adolescent Mental Health Unit, Local
Health Authority, South-East Florence (Florence - IT); (3) Centro Studi Martha Harris, Florence (Florence - IT)
a concrete way, the beginning of prenatal life.
These emotional experiences can compromise
the qualities of the “internal motherhood” (Mori,
2009), the mother-infant attachment relationship
and the maternal postnatal mental state.
The feelings involved become more violent and
disturbing as the diagnostic path deepens and
reveals either suspect or certain pathologies,
leading to the burdensome choice between
interrupting and carrying on the pregnancy. The
healthcare professional team is invested with
great and omnipotent expectations by the clients
who ask the medicine and the diagnostics
to give them the certainty of a healthy infant and
then, in case of a pathology, with the projections
of their hatred and guilt. The emotional
experiences of the healthcare professionals,
their “countertransference” and their technical
role are complex and difficult to manage from a
psychological and relational point of view. The
psychologist, following an integrated approach,
offers the opportunity, both to the clients and to
the professionals, to represent and to express
the otherwise unthinkable emotional experience,
making the emotional dimension explicit and
offering containment and emotional relief. The
contribution of the psychologists of the perinatal
psychology path within the Prenatal Diagnosis
Unit , following a first observational phase,
meant to assess the healthcare professionals’
intervention strategies and the women’s and
couples’ needs, and aimed at our gradual inclusion
in the unit, comprised the following interventions:
1. support in the organization of informative
sessions during prenatal diagnosis addressed
to the couples; the aim was to reduce the anxiety
caused by the information provided and to
foster an “emotionally” more adequate language
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and a sensitive approach to group relationships
among the healthcare professionals;
2. assessment of the women’s anxiety (both
state and trait, by the use of the STAI) among
those taking part in the prenatal consultation,
and, in cases of positive outcome, proposal of
deeper psychological assessment and possible
support psychological sessions (an opportunity
to prevent complications during labour and
delivery as well as postnatal mental distress -
anxiety and depression- see also Casadei and
Righetti, 2010);
3. consultation “en binôme” physicianpsychologist
Bydlowski, 2009) in specific situations, and
inclusion of a psychological sessions in the intervention
program of the unit, in case of pathology,
in order to embrace the pregnancy from a
point f view that integrates both the somatic and
the mental dimensions;
4. team discussions of the cases rom a relational
and emotional perspective. The interventions
are psychoanalytically oriented and heir
technical references include the French studies
of Soulé, Golse, Bydlowski e Missionner. In the
full text of the communication we report the
quantitative and qualitative data concerning the
first semester of activity, along with a few brief
clinical examples.