Stéphane Place, edited by Solène Delinger 1:54 p.m., February 13, 2022

After a long period spent in an artificial coma, patients with a long Covid wake up completely disoriented.

At the Bordeaux University Hospital, psychologist Aurélie Mollard works in intensive care units to help them manage post-traumatic stress. 

REPORTING

A collapsing house of cards, a black hole, a before/after... This is what many patients who have developed a serious form of Covid feel, to the point of being admitted here to the medical intensive care unit. from the University Hospital of Bordeaux.

A physical rehabilitation

"We are going to put these patients on medical support to make them unconscious in order to be able to take care of the various organs that are lacking and supplement them", explains Doctor Benjamin Clouzeau.

"So, there is a whole period of their life that they are not aware of. And sometimes, when they are aware of it, when they are woken up, they undergo at that moment a very important physical, psychological attack, which is necessarily destructive. 

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Many anxiety-depressive syndromes

The patients therefore undergo physical rehabilitation after weeks of artificial coma but also psychological follow-up with the help of Aurélie Mollard, a psychologist assigned to the resuscitation and intensive care services of the Bordeaux hospital.

“We observe a lot of anxio-depressive syndromes. We must already treat all the symptoms of acute stress, which can lead to post-traumatic stress states, if they are not in any case accompanied at the time of resuscitation”, she explains on Europe 1. "It's not going to be just listening".

The psychologist is at the side of her patients who have spent several weeks in intensive care, like this man who is slowly coming back to reality.

"If we don't do a little housekeeping in the head, we won't move forward," he confides on Europe 1. "It's very, very important".

For some patients affected during the first wave of Covid, this psychological follow-up continues two years later.