Focus on Nadine Streit, teacher at the CEERRF

Patient knowledge

More general questions then led me to a master’s degree in educational sciences. How does medical information flow to patients, what do they know about their disease? What type of information do they have access to on the internet and mass self-communication social networks? What is the value of the patient experience and the information flowing through patient groups on these networks?

After several interviews and an analysis of the content of the exchanges on these virtual communities, the conclusion of this work will be that the social networks of mass self-communication allow patients to exchange their therapeutic experiences. Medical, paramedical and complementary medicine treatments are subject to criticism and informal evaluation. Behind these communities hide potential knowledge that it would be interesting to formalize.

Sexuality and Neurological Disability

A DIU in Sexual Health and Human Rights allowed me to explore this topic.

Our choice of partner depends partly on innate, unconscious and unmodifiable cognitive structures linked to primitive instincts, as well as acquired cognitive structures which are also unconscious but partly modifiable, linked to our education, the influence of our groups of membership and the media.

Our society claims to be more and more inclusive; it should therefore carry less stereotypes concerning the sexuality of minorities and be made up of larger and more inclusive groups. At the same time, a paradigm shift concerning the definition and management of disability has emerged in recent decades with the notion of participation; society becomes responsible for the limits encountered by its citizens within it and by definition, the notion of disability becomes contextualized.

However, despite these structural changes, the term disability, designating a social group, remains the predominant generic term at the heart of the debates, maintained by contradictory feelings of both “horror” and “angelism” that it evokes. In the words of Professor Hamonet [1], “these emotions are perhaps a particular expression of social archaisms and ancestral fears of the other”. However, remember that a paradigm shift requires a modification of old patterns within the whole society towards new social representations.

In this work, I was interested in stereotypes around the sexuality of people with motor disabilities and the way they are conveyed within our profession in order to identify the clichés relayed in our society. This work will be continued this year by a 4th year student at CEERRF.

Pain and magical thinking

Unfortunately, “the dark side of plasticity” [1], would favor the appearance and persistence of chronic pain. According to the biopsychosocial approach, a paradigm that has become predominant today in medical research, chronic pain could persist despite the disappearance of its nociceptive origin in an unfavorable psychosocial context. The most current hypothesis within the neurosciences is that chronic pain, recognized as a full disease, could have as its origin or subsequently lead to a structural and functional reorganization of the brain [2].

This cerebral reorganization would lead to negative behaviors and emotions and a slowdown in other cognitive functions.

According to many scientific articles and health professionals, it is important to make the patient aware of the partly psychosocial origin of chronic pain. This pain could also hide an explicit request from the patient, reflecting a deeper existential suffering. However, it should be remembered that the psychosocial origins of chronic pain remain hypothetical and that patients feel little understood, discriminated against or even discriminate against this suffering.