New Online Psychological Support Service in Spain
– Written by the Moving Forward Team on January 10th 2023
The second Moving Forward meeting in Spain that happened earlier this month in Valencia was the stage to announce the launching of a new Moving Forward service for the Spanish HD community – an online psychological support service exclusively dedicated to people at risk for HD and people with premanifest HD – figure 1 and photo 1
Figure 1 – Flyer of the Online Psychological Support Service
Photo 1 – Ruth Blanco presenting Francisco Iruela at the Moving Forward Valencian Meeting
This service was put together in response to the needs identified in a recent Moving Forward survey made to the Spanish HD community. The answers were really inspiring to our project, proving that tailored psychological support is a key issue for people at risk and people with premanifest HD in Spain – figure 2.
Figure 2 – Community inputs in the Moving Forward Spanish Survey
Consequently, the EHA – European Huntington Association, with the support of the Huntington Liga – Belgium and Roche, started to organize and plan this new action several months ago. This service aims to provide online individual and group therapy to people at risk for HD and people with premanifest HD from all over Spain.
Several HD experts will be involved in this project: Francisco Iruela, a Valencian clinical psychologist who is also an HD family member, will be in charge of the psychotherapeutic interventions. The psychologists Monica Rodriguez, based in Palma de Maiorca, Cesar Aguilera Vega, based in Madrid, and Filipa Júlio, based in Portugal, will oversee the psychological assessments and provide supervision.
The entire team is highly committed to this initiative and has great expectations about the benefits and additional resources it will bring to the Spanish HD community and local HD associations – photo 2.
You can find more about this new Moving Forward service in this video:
The team is also putting together a new section in the Spanish version of the Moving Forward webpage dedicated to this specific initiative.
We hope this service can serve and help those who need it the most – that is why it will be online and free of charge.
If you are interested in taking part of this initiative or need more information, please contact us as soon as possible, by sending an email to Ruth@ehamovingforward.org or by checking our dedicated section in this webpage. Please don’t miss this unique opportunity to strengthen your skills to deal with HD!
Photo 2 – EHA/Moving Forward team with Francisco Iruela at the Valencian Meeting
Acknowledgements: Mireia Sánchez (photography), Verónica Sánchez (illustration)
