“Why do people (re)act the way they do? Why do people feel different in the same situation? These are some of the questions that I was deeply fascinated by, already as a little kid. I have a genetic disease myself and I am grateful to be able to combine genetics and human behaviour in my job.”
Charlotte Spaas graduated as a clinical psychologist in 2016 and since 2017 she has been working at the UZA at the Center for Medical Genetics. She counsels people who are confronted with hereditary diseases – presymptomatic and diagnostic – and people who receive bad news during their pregnancy. For people who carry a BRCA mutation or another hereditary mutation that causes an increased cancer risk, she provides support in the field of the pre-symptomatic testing procedure, support during a cancer diagnosis with a mutation as the underlying cause and during a prenatal testing process.
There is room for questions, open conversation, all kinds of emotions and carrying bad news together. Openness, family communication, making informed choices and resilience are core aspects of the conversation.
BRCA network asbl/vzw
