Sabine Wittens is a doctor in the emergency room of the ETZ in Tilburg. In recent nights she has seen many young patients who have become psychologically entangled with themselves due to the corona crisis. Who want to take their own life by taking far too many medicines or injuring themselves. “Corona is not just the stuffy patient we bring to the ICU. Young people also have problems. ”
The second corona wave engulfs the Brabant hospitals. Healthcare workers are on the front line everywhere to help COVID patients as best they can. Five of them keep a video diary for Omroep Brabant. Here you can read and see their stories.
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They are poignant scenes in the emergency room in corona times. “We have seen serious problems, which affects us very much,” says Sabine. “Corona is also the psychological problem that we see more and more in the emergency department.”
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It has really been the theme of the past nights, says Sabine. “Young people who end up in the emergency room after taking an overdose of drugs because they no longer see life. Or hurt themselves, because they don’t want to go on living. ”
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Sabine talks about it with Tinka and Bina, two young medical assistants with whom she works a lot in the emergency room. “It’s confronting to see,” says Bina. “They are peers of ours, people your own age who have such a hard time because they end up in social isolation.” Tinka adds: “So much so that they see an overdose of medicines or hurt themselves as the only way out.”
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Especially for these young medical assistants it comes very close. They sleep badly, sometimes dream about the young people with mental health problems they saw in the emergency room, Sabine knows.
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“You will take this home with you”, Tinka agrees. “I try to let it go by looking for a lot of distraction. I was a student myself not so long ago, fortunately not in isolation, but if it was a different situation, it could have happened to me too. ” Talking a lot with colleagues also helps, Bina adds. “Then you can talk it off a bit and you don’t take it home like that.”
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Here you can see the story of Sabine and the stories of her colleagues:
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Talking about thoughts of suicide helps and is possible, for example, via the national helpline 113: www.113.nl or by phone 0900-0113.
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ALSO READ THE OTHER STORIES OF BRABANT KEEP FULL:
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