© EFE / Morell
Alicante Red Cross provides psychological care to Ukrainian refugees with workshops and personalized attention.
The welcoming families from refugees Ukrainians should have prior psychological training to provide “affection, security and honesty”because that way they help reduce stress, according to the neuropsychologist Raquel Balmaseda.
This professor of the Master in Clinical Neuropsychology at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR) has analyzed the impact from war about the people to brain level and the process for its recovery.
The displaced people welcomed, and especially the children, Balmaseda pointed out, need develop with their host families “a bond” in which affection prevails, to feel “loved and safe”. In addition, he has considered that it is important to treat the little ones “with honesty” and don’t lie or hide thingsespecially from the age of 7.
Another recommendation from this Sevillian expert for lower the stress “reduce uncertainty”, for which it proposes to articulate mechanisms that help control the situation from little routines.
From a neurological point of view, the intense fear caused by situations such as the war in Ukraine causes several disorders, including Post traumatic stress. “Fear is a basic and primitive emotion, whose function is the survivalso it is a useful and adaptive response,” he said.
When an event is experienced as something traumatic, there is a dysregulation between the two ways of recording this fact, “so that everything the emotional is picked up very vividly and the most contextual images are barely recorded“, as he explained.
This phenomenon occurs in complicated situationssuch as a natural disaster, a traffic accident or a sexual assault, events from which a post-traumatic stress disorder can be generated, he has said, just as it is happening in this war.
People with this disorder relive the traumatic event with intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and nightmares; they avoid situations that remind them of that event; present a hypervigilance or reactivity to any related stimulus; and present cognitive alterationssuch as attention and memory. In addition, he has added that they may suffer from problems with their mood, such as anxiety, depressionfeelings of guilt.
Among the psychological sequels that the war will leave, he specified that the fighters They can suffer physical injuries and also mild brain damage by exposure to shock wave from explosionswhich can cause post-concussion syndrome with headache, tinnitus, insomniairritability, mood swings and apathyamong others.
On the other hand, the civil population suffer from emotional disturbances such as depression, anxiety and more vulnerability to stressful situationswhich provoke “more exaggerated responses” than in people who have not had a previous trauma.
The childrenwhose brain is developing, will have aftermath on a physical, cognitive, emotional and social level after experiencing the circumstances of an armed conflict, which will manifest “in the long termwhen brain functions are already affected”, this expert concluded.