Humanidades as a Team in The Covid Syndemic: Between Practice and Research

Abstract

This article discusses the experience of Team Humanidades, a group of psychologists and psychiatrists that emerged as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak to provide, voluntarily, one-off, or short-term psychological care to patients enduring hardship during the pandemic. Compassionate listening was a core component of the psychological process, however, various other psychological methodologies were also incorporated during patient interactions. Team Humanidades is still playing an active role in offering both individual and group psychological online care to patients despite the acute phase of the pandemic passing. Team Humanidades undertook research to document patient profiles, investigated the reasons why patients sought psychological care and examined how psychologists and psychiatrists perceived each patient’s situation. The results show that psychic suffering transcends the biological issue, since socioeconomic dimensions have potentiated the serious problem of the disease – characterizing what is conceptualized as a syndemic. Furthermore, data from around 5000 patient appointments revealed that there was a significant increase in domestic conflicts during the pandemic, which remain at a high level. These conflicts were likely intensified by the confined environment that patients and their families were exposed to due to Covid-19 isolation measures. Our practice throughout the pandemic facilitated the development of therapeutic strategies in conversational networks, which led to new “family configurations”.