During these very difficult times, due to coronavirus, the work of Respiro has grown a lot on the counselling side.
So many people contact them asking for help. In addition to the psychologists they have on the team, they have added 5 pastors who deal with spiritual cases.
“We are hard at work, but we enjoy great results,” said Gabriel Iarca, Respiro Association President. “Our plan for the future is to extend our counselling platform, and to be able to offer even more complex psychological and spiritual counselling services.”
CD-EUDNews interviewed Gabriel Iarca to gain better knowledge of the Association’seffectiveness in this Coronavirus time.
How has Respiro organised a strategy in order to be effective while coping with the Covid-19 emergency?
In order to be effective, we organised our work from home. Our project team member was in charge of keeping in touch with our team of volunteers.
We created a registration system through which beneficiaries, affected by anxiety or depression in the context generated by the pandemic, could request psychological and spiritual counselling. Each counselling session was provided by Christiancounsellors/psychotherapists or pastors specialized in cognitive behavioural therapy.
Counselling sessions were done by phone or video conference (via Skype), each beneficiary having the opportunity to be involved in 6 counselling sessions or more, with each session lasting one hour.
During the sessions, the counsellor focused on developing skills for coping with anxiety, panic attacks, and help in regaining and restoring hope. Most beneficiaries experienced high levels of anxiety and panic attacks.
Because we are living this restriction and being banned at home, howdoes Respiro continue to offer services to its participants?
Because of the current situation and restrictions, we moved all our activity into the online environment. Our team is working from home. Also, the counselling meetings were moved online (via Skype) and all our efforts were focused on providing special assistance to all those who requested our help. In order to organise our activity, we have three weekly online meetings with our internal team.
Which service is the most followed from your contacts?
We now have all projects on one website and one social media page. But during the pandemic, the number of followers increased significantly.
All our projects can be accessed through our Facebook page, Instagram, or website.
During the pandemic, the number of our followers increased significantly and also the number of counselling requests, online registrations for our online courses, and downloads of eBooks.
Psychological counselling is now the most followed service. We have a team of professional counsellors and psychotherapists who are trained to provide psychological interventions in different situations; they also have a Christian background and they provide Christian-principle-based counselling using science-based methods.
Do you have a notable anecdote to share?
One of our counsellors worked, for a couple of sessions, with a young lady who came to us in a psychotic episode (she was incoherent, she thought that someone was after her and she called the police and said that she was a terrorist). After the initial episode, she followed a series of counselling [sessions] in our free counselling programme.
At the same time, she followed a treatment indicated by a psychiatrist.
As much as possible we tried to help her reintegrate into her environment. She was living by herself because her mother was in Italy. During her crisis, we contacted her mother and she came back to Romania to take care of her. After a couple of sessions, she was prepared to get back to college and finalise her bachelor studies and work on her thesis.
After a while, she decided to move from Bucharest to Iași (the place where her faculty is) and to have a fresh start there.
Also, she is now working with her first psychotherapist from Iasi. Recently, she sent us a “thank you” message and she expressed how much the therapy she got at Respiro helped her to restart her life. She said that we are doing a wonderful work for youth.
Are you considering that something will change in the future, i.e. meeting atthe Respiro headquarters?
We hope that face-to-face interaction will not be restricted after the pandemic ends and we hope to get back to our headquarters. We think that face-to-face interaction is more qualitative, but we will also try to be prepared in case things change dramatically.
