the TODI On the furniture of the living room there are balls of colored wool and needles to work on it. Maria, 16 years, is very concentrated. Suffering from anorexia nervosa, and to weave those threads the helps in its long days of towards healing. “I enjoy making a scarf. It does me good to give life to something.” In the room there are three girls, between gold there are those who want to talk about the disease, those who are farther away. Are 18 the guests of Palazzo Francisci in Todi, the first public facility dedicated to eating disorders. Among them there is also a male. How is it going with him? “Well, even if sometimes we have a discussion about what there is to see on television,” says Cassandra. She is 15 years old and suffers from bulimia nervosa, eating excessively and uncontrollably. A sad look when she tells her story and the afternoons of solitude. “Now I’m much better,” he explains when I go home in the end of the week I can check the food. Before, I’d told these things to my parents, I considered it all a secret, I suck. Now I’m not ashamed any more.” Eating disorders in Italy on the eve of the national Day of Bow Lilac , dedicated to increasing awareness and prevention of eating disorders, which is held on the 15th march, we discover that in Italy there are more than 3 million people who suffer from these diseases. The 95,9% of which are women and 4.1% of men. But is concerned about the increase of children, between 8 and 9 years, among them 20 % is male. “If it is spoken very little time, after the death of the boy, Turin. The problem, ” explains Simonetta Marucci , endocrinologa that has been working for years at the Palazzo Francisci – is that now the males are more but that for them the diagnosis is more complicated, because anorexia is considered a disease of women. If a female slimming too there arises the problem, for a male, no. And make a diagnosis later, decreases the chances of recovery or, however, makes the therapy much longer”.
The meal At the Palazzo Francisci, and the kids have stopped eating recently. A complete meal: first, second, and fruit. For them it’s a conquest. The meals are in a room with a few tables in groups of three or four. The first few days there are those who does not end what he has in the pot, but slowly things change. “With the help of the nutritionist, I learned how to eat pasta without feeling guilty. What helps us here – she tells Sara, 18 years – is that here we can share our problem. We understand and we are sympathetic among us. You have created many friendships. For me it was the bike important the support of my family”. The team of expert physicians, nutritionists, psychiatrists, and nurses of Palazzo Francisci (around 25 people) for not wearing a coat. Nothing should remind you of a healthcare facility. The idea is a house where dealing with every aspect of the disease. The meals are: breakfast, mid morning snack, then lunch and in the afternoon, as a snack, later dinner. Many of them arrive in Todi in difficult conditions, after long fasts. “In these cases – adds Marucci – we always aim to save the life of the person. If there is malnutrition, the brain goes into short circuit and can not think, it is useless to try to teach the new rules, the ones you think of after. Let’s show these young people that food is like a drug. If you are sick does not count on the flavor of whatever you put on the table, is a therapy to take”. Karate and poetry, The days are marked by many activities.You study, because each one, when you are better, continue the program, school or university education, then there are the activities: yoga, karate, poetry, or nutrition. There are those who go out to follow a music lesson. “There is a group of Haiku poetry – explains Marucci – that has given excellent results. The kids have to write a short poem of 17 syllables to express an emotion. It helps to make contact with the sensations of your body. A girl wrote: ‘I’m a nettle that dies between ears of wheat'”.
The goal is to help them to get a new awareness of your body and the therapy of the mirror goes in this direction. The illness pushes you to look fat even when they do not. “It’s what we call ‘dispercezione of the body, feel fat even when they do not – adds Marucci – . Everything revolves around the sermon on the awareness of the body. At the beginning
“But serve other centers of care” physicians, nutritionists, psychiatrists, and nurses of Palazzo Francisci offer a course of care tailored to the patient, but in Italy there are few facilities like this and cured it is not so simple. The experts of Palazzo Francisci remind us of how important it is to export the Anorexia nervosa and bulimia, know no boundaries and affect people of every Region in the same way, but the public facilities or contracted, available to are instead distributed on the territory patchy. And this on the occasion of the Bow Lilac 2020 experts launch an appeal: “more and More facilities to treat eating disorders”. To put so many other guys “poised” to recover themselves and to be helped in a suitable environment.
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