Most of the time, I get emotionally touched when families come in my office requesting for information about our services. Who wouldn’t? It is true that our Hospital is not very well known in the area. In addition to being referred to as “a place where mad people are treated”, it would make sense why people don’t know “exactly” what is going “in” there. Some family members, after giving the information about our services, the first question they ask is: “do you think my son/daughter can change?” This is a fundamental question not to ignore. And the parents are really serious when they ask this type of question.
Two weeks ago, I was exchanging with one parent who was telling me about his son who had turned into a drug abuser for more than 4 years. This poor mother had tried all means to help his son, but nothing had worked. Fortunately, she didn’t get hopeless. After hearing about our hospital, he turned to us hoping that we could “change” his son from being a drug abuser into being a good boy again. At the end of the exchange I told her something that she seemed not to like. “We don’t have magic power to change people”. Even though she didn’t like it, I couldn’t put it in another way to make it sound better. This is the reality. I continued telling her that “we don’t change people”; however, we “integrate them”; we help them realize their potential; we help them regain their capabilities; we provide them a milieu to set up new goals in life; last but not the least, we help them to correct what is “off beam” in their behavior and their way of acting and reacting.
For the last 6 years we have had another patient who kept coming back to our hospital because he couldn’t follow correctly his treatment. After a long investigation of his case, we finally figured out that the really problem lied in the family. His family had not arrived at a point of accepting this patient as the way he is. They had wanted their brother to change, but not to change themselves. What do you do when you can’t change it? May be you change the way you look at it, the way you think about it…He couldn’t be changed. They only needed to accept him, understand him, and integrate him. At the hospital, this patient was perfect; yet, at home, he was different. What did we do? No magic! We had to tell this family that they couldn’t change their brother; what they needed to do was to change their home ambiance: their way of loving him, of interacting with him, of talking to him, of listening to him…
Is that they way it is? – No, you can do something to make it better, accommodating, and acceptable. On the other hand, - Yes, at some point, you can’t change the way the person is. Sometimes we tell people, “this is the way we do it, go and do the same at your home, then you will see the change you need”. We have tried to find ways to involve actively family members in our care, to make them understand that we can’t do it alone. In psychiatry we don’t treat the patient, we treat the family. It is like a coin one side being the patient and the other, the family. You can’t take one side without the other. That’s the way it is.
Jean-Clement, RN, BSN
No comments:
Post a Comment