The psychological emergency room for the victims of the road and their family members: the Ania Cares project
A long trail of blood and pain seems to stain the streets of our cities every day. We don’t pass weeks without the city news in front of us yet another tragedy of the road.
Women, men, teenagers, children united by the same destiny: see their life broken on the asphalt. A carelessness, an error, a roar. The life that is no longer the same in a few minutes. Both for the victim and family members.
Istat data are clear. In 2015 road accidents grew in Italy, with an increase in deaths. I am 3,419 the victims and 246,050 the injured. By comparing the data with previous years, the deaths returned to increase for the first time after 15 years, resulting 38 more than in 2014.
Significant numbers that cannot leave indifferent both in terms of road safety and with respect to the strong emotional impact and road accidents create on all those involved.
In fact, physical damage, very often there are psychological consequences that change people’s lives forever. None of all that known and lived until then will remain the same.
Road accidents increase the risk of complicated mourning
The loss of a loved one represents an ineliminable dimension of human existence.
Following the death of a person to whom you are deeply linked, mourning is activated, i.e. a physiological response characterized by a succession of psychological, behavioral, social and physical reactions.
In most cases this response hesitates in the growing acceptance of death and in the gradual restoration of the ability to reinvest in new interests, activities and relationships. In some cases, however, a pathological response of mourning emerges in which a lack of progression towards the resolution occurs, with consequent difficulty in recognizing the irreversibility of the loss.
In these situations individuals meet a real destruction of their perception of the world and how predictable and controllable it is, with consequent feelings of fear, confusion and despair. The mourning phase can be so accompanied by an extensive formulation of hypotheses, almost looking for something that can rewind the tape by canceling what was needed.
In this way, in addition to the loved one, the sense of control and mastery on our life would have recovered. “If only I hadn’t allowed my son to take the scooter, now he would still be alive“
The case of fatal road accidents, or with serious injuries, is classified to greater risk of complicated mourning and post-traumatic stress disorder for family members because the deaths have peculiar characteristics that differentiate them from natural deaths or from illness.
These are dead unexpectedbecause they tend to happen mostly suddenly and unexpectedly, without any warning, not allowing family members any time to prepare for the tragic news or to give farewell to their loved one, unlike when a death is consequent to a disease.
They are dead prematurebecause they often concern people who die early and unnaturally. Since road accidents are the main cause of death for most young people are above all parents who can be affected by the loss, a loss that goes to undermine a planning that they had imagined and built.
They are dead avoidablebecause being the direct consequence of negligent or imprudent behavior to the guide by another person can block or in any case make the physiological process of healing of the wound resulting more complicated to mourning, as it could be avoided.
Finally they died violentbecause they can give rise to mutilate effects on the body of the victims such as to generate intrusive memories of that visualization, after family members have had contact with the victim.
Scientific research has indicated that the recovery of a sense of safety for the families of the victims of a traffic accident gradually reduces the negative psychological effects of the impact of the event and limits the risk of developing a post-traumatic symptoms in the following months.
Training, experience and method of communication are fundamental variables for the processing process of mourning and for the emotional well -being of the recipients. Family members will always remember the way they have received this terrible news. Doing it respectful, understanding, empathic, can decrease the impact of the severity of the incident on the reactions of family members and their subsequent adaptation and allow the beginning of the integration process.
The support intervention should also focus on a return to the calm of the individuals involved in the event. The increase in emotional responses following the event is to be considered a normal reaction of normal people in the face of an abnormal event, adaptive in response to an event that threatens the existence and integrity of an individual. However, this emotional activation can remain up to interfere with the normal functioning of an individual.
Emergency psychological interventions therefore do not put at the center of attention a pathology to be cured, but a normality to be preserved and enhanced even in extreme situations.
Psychological support to the victims of the road: Ania Cares
Ania Cares is a unique project of its kind internationally, developed by the Ania Foundation in collaboration with the Faculty of Psychology of the La Sapienza University of Rome and the Traffic Police, and aims to offer a qualified psychological assistance network to overcome the often serious psychological consequences due to permanent physical damage or to the loss of a loved one.
The three -year project intends to represent a point of reference for psychological support in the national territory for victims of road accidents and their family members. Thanks to the advice of experts, the first specialist protocol worldwide was developed by “Psychological First Aid” for the treatment of psychological trauma due to a road accident and support for victims and their family members.
The project, operational in the first phase in Milan, Rome, Campobasso and Florence, comes alive this week with the beginning of the training course in the psychological emergency room for a group of psychologists selected in the four pilot cities.
In the coming months, a toll -free number connected to a network of psychologists at national level, available 24 hours a day, will be available, which will provide an assistance network for psychological trauma due to a road accident and support for the victims themselves and their families.
Ania Cares therefore represents a secondary prevention approach for the victims of the road that has the function of mitigating the acute stress deriving from direct involvement in an adverse event, responding to the needs of the victims and their family members and promoting their adaptive functioning, the perception of safety and a progressive return to everyday life.
Bibliography:
Lori, G., & Battagli, F. (2013). The communication of death to the families of the victims. Cerchioblu, Florence.
Pietrantoni, L., Prati, G., & Palestini, L. (2008). First psychological first aid in the maxi-emergency and disasters. An operating manual. CLUEB.
