To Propose a Medico-Social Accompaniment by the Geography: Identify, Analyze and Stimulate the Relations between Person and Environment
This article aims to present a methodological device deployed in France within the framework of a thesis work in geography carried out in immersion in an association which accompanies people having undergone brain injuries (LADAPT Puy-de-Dôme in Clermont-Ferrand). The consequences of a brain injury can be physical, sensory, psycho-behavioral or cognitive, and are multiple and different depending on the individual. Affecting the capacity of people to construct mental images of space, they often result in feelings of stress and anxiety that they experience in environments that they do not master well. Built from an environmental and situational approach to disability, the methodological device deployed in this thesis is based on two main tools: interviews and cartographic workshops. While the cartographic interviews made it possible to understand the relationship that the persons accompanied have with their daily spaces, the cartographic workshops were built with the aim of stimulating their perception of the environment. The latter, set up following the association’s move to new premises located in another district of Clermont-Ferrand, took the form of several activities. Based on the hypothesis that the new district where the association was established would be the object of a poorly defined mental image in the people accompanied by the association and would be a generator of ill-being, the aim of this approach was to propose cartographic and spatial exercises in order to reinforce their spatial mastery of the sector.