2023-12-03 09:02:12
by Ruggiero Corcella
The expert: the family must convince patients to get help without placing themselves in a judgmental and aggressive position. We need to understand that pathology is not a whim, a fashion, but a great suffering. The role of specialized centers
Emanuela Perinetti, sports manager, passed away at just 34 years old following the worsening of the illness she was fighting against. «For some time – said his father Giorgio Perinetti, historic sporting director of Roma now responsible for the technical area of Avellino football – he had been fighting against anorexia». She had been admitted to Fatebenefratelli after a fall at home. Her body was now frail and weak. In the following article we asked an expert what lies behind this disease and how it can be treated.
«Family members must understand that the pathology is not a whim, a trend, but a great suffering of the son/daughter without placing themselves in a judgmental and aggressive position. They must slowly convince their loved one to seek treatment, accompanying them to the specialized center closest to home.” Laura Dalla Ragione, director of the Eating Disorders network Local Health Authority 1 of Umbria, Biomedical Campus of Rome and representative of the Ministry of Health, continues to see new cases that fall within the so-called Nutrition and Eating Disorders (DNA) such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder.
DNA constitutes one of the most worrying pathologies in the Western hemisphere today: it is spreading with remarkable rapidity, affecting increasingly larger segments of the population, and is taking on increasingly diversified and serious forms and characteristics. In the latest survey by the Ministry of Health for 2022, 3 million 400 thousand people in Italy are affected by these pathologies. And the age of onset has dropped significantly, with girls and boys aged 8 to 12 making up 30% of the affected population.
Parents are often confused: they don’t understand what’s happening and they blame themselves: how can we deal with the problem in the family with those who suffer from it?
«The family is deeply involved in food pathology. But since the 70s, a time when the family was blamed a lot, it has come to be considered a resource in the therapeutic process. First of all because the theories that saw it as the main culprit have been abandoned, precisely because food pathology has a multifactorial etiology, where the family is one of the elements to take into consideration but not the only one. Family members must understand that the pathology is not a whim, a trend, but a great suffering of their son/daughter without placing themselves in a judgmental and aggressive position. They must slowly convince the patient to seek treatment, accompanying him to the specialized center closest to home.”
What are the signs to look out for?
«We certainly need to monitor the signs relating to nutrition that persist over time (such as eliminating large categories of food, doing a lot of physical activity, going to the bathroom immediately after meals) but alongside these behaviors we are witnessing a noticeable change in character, guys. and girls who were brilliant, cheerful, full of desire to live turn off, become sad, withdrawn, introverted. Here are the two things that should make us suspect that something is happening.”
Who to contact?
«It is very important to get treatment early, which must be specialized and multidisciplinary: early diagnosis and continuity of care are the guarantee of a complete recovery. The Presidency of the Council has made available a national toll-free number 800180969 active from Monday to Friday which provides information on the centers closest to home and provides support to parents, patients and teachers”.
What advice do you give to a person suffering from these disorders and their family?
«The important message is that these pathologies can be cured. At the first clinical and psychological signs, however, it is necessary to contact specialized centers, even if it is not always easy to convince those who suffer from it to seek treatment. They are insidious pathologies where scholastic and social functioning seems to be perfect, but a sort of serious and profound depression develops inside the patient. Unfortunately, a spontaneous remission of the pathology is not described, if it is not treated it tends to worsen. Therefore the entire family, school, sporting and friendship context must unite to convince the affected person to accept help.”
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December 3, 2023 (changed December 3, 2023 | 07:17)
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