Maya Corman wins France-Quebec bursary

Motivated both by a desire to understand people and to support them in alleviating their suffering, Maya Corman set her sights on becoming a clinical psychologist and began her studies at the University of Clermont Auvergne in 2010. There, she graduated in 2015 with a professional master's degree in clinical psychology. I was 23, I thought I was a bit young to be practicing, and I was tempted by the prospect of doing a thesis, she recounts. So she went on to complete a second research-oriented master's degree in social and cognitive psychology, then embarked on a PhD in psycho-oncology under the supervision of Michaël Dambrun, Régis Peffault De La Tour and Jacques-Olivier Bay¹. At first, I wasn't particularly drawn to end-of-life or oncology issues, I was mainly interested in the suffering of emotionally deprived teenagers, she recounts. However, she spent the next four years trying to identify the socio-psychological factors likely to have an impact on the transplant process in people with haemopathies². With her thesis supervisor, she designed an intervention program aimed at improving their mental and physical health, and developed a digital wellness support platform (the MyABiE³ application).

While the manuscript of her thesis is now complete with a view to an October defense, the young researcher is already engaged in a new project, developed in collaboration with her research director Michaël Dambrun and algologist Katell Ménard⁴. MEDICANCER, funded by the Cancéropôle Lyon Auvergne Rhône-Alpes (CLARA), aims to develop tools based on mindfulness meditation⁵ tailored to the needs of palliative care patients. To identify these needs, she is currently conducting interviews with this target population. The themes and expressions regularly recurring in the discourse of these patients will help her to determine lines of action on which to base the development of suitable meditation exercises.

"I really wanted to go to Canada to explore the palliative care clinic"

In her approach, Maya Corman addresses suffering as a whole, i.e. in its physical, psychological, social and spiritual⁶ dimensions. However, the experience of this suffering can vary depending on how it is dealt with, but also on cultural factors. The young woman, who is also interested in cross-cultural psychology, asks herself: is this global suffering experienced in the same way in different countries? How are certain variations in treatment linked to culture? Information about the scholarship offered by the Plateforme and RQSPAL comes at just the right time. I really wanted to go to Canada to explore the palliative care clinic, discover their care system and bring back new ideas to France, she admits. She added an intercultural dimension to the MEDICANCER project, proposing to continue her interviews in Quebec, from a comparative perspective. Despite the difficulties caused by the Covid-19 crisis, she eventually found a host laboratory and completed her application⁷... A few weeks later she learned that her application had been accepted. She will spend two months at the Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier universitaire de Montréal in the spring of 2021.

When asked about her career prospects, Maya Corman doesn't really consider choosing between clinical practice and research. They are activities that go hand in hand and are complementary. Each can feed off the other. I see research as indispensable to my practice as a clinician and, in return, I think it's important, as a researcher, to stay in touch with populations to be able to intervene and find solutions. In the future, I'd like to develop a private practice around home care for people at the end of life, while conducting research in palliative care on the psychological side of well-being, she confides.

In the meantime, we'll be taking stock of this Quebec experience next year.

1. Michaël Dambrun, lecturer at the University of Clermont Auvergne and researcher at the Social and Cognitive Psychology Laboratory (LAPSCO). Régis Peffault De La Tour, Hematology Department, Marrow Transplant, Hôpital Saint Louis, Paris. Jacques-Olivier Bay, Service de thérapie cellulaire et d'hématologie clinique adulte, CHU de Clermont-Ferrand.
2. Hematological malignancies are cancers of the blood (leukemias, lymphomas...).
3. https://myabie.com
4. Katell Ménard is an algologist and palliatologist at the Centre médical des sapins and the Centre Jean Perrin in Clermont-Ferrand.
5. Mindfulness meditation is a concept from the Eastern philosophical tradition that has been used since the 1970s to bring relief to people suffering from chronic illnesses. The principle is to deliberately focus attention on the present moment, remaining in observation and without reactivity. A method that requires practice, and for which there are dedicated exercises (which are in fact attentional training exercises).
6. The notion of total pain describes the multidimensional nature of suffering in palliative care patients. It was introduced by Cicely Saunders, the British nurse, physician and writer who pioneered the concept of palliative care and founded the first dedicated hospital facility.
7. The research project that will be the subject of the internship is entitled Cross-cultural comparison by semi-structured interviews of the concept of Total Pain in palliative care: differences and similarities between France and Quebec.

Contact:
Maya CORMAN
maya.corman@free.fr

Published June 15, 2020
Author : Delphine Gosset