Chiara’s story: « When Parkinson’s took away dad I decided to disappear too, stopping eating »

When Chiara realized that her father, with a Parkinson’s Discovered at a young age, he would never go back to walking, talking and smiling, she stopped eating. While he left, he had decided that he had to go out too. « I felt immense anger because I was unjustly removed the right to grow with my father, » he says. But the obsessive thoughts on food had started at least two years earlier. « I was 15 years old – he continues -. I always saw myself too fat in the mirror despite being thin, I even weighed less than what I should have based on my body mass index. That feeling excessively in the flesh had become a fixed nail, first silent and then, with the passing of the months, unnerving and cumbersome. I could no longer think about anything else. I was pointed out on a notebook everything I ate, with the approximate calorie intake. I had not started to follow restrictive diets, I ate more or less as before but every time I felt enormously guilty ». Chiara, at 24, after winning the battle against theanorexiahe is sure of one thing and wants to say it to all young people toy of the concern for food: «These persistent thoughts, which take more and more space in the mind and remove interest in everything else, are the antechamber of the eating disorder. Ask for help already now, not postponed! First you do it and easier and faster it will be to get out of it, without endangering health. The specialists will open their eyes and make you understand that Behind the obsession with the body, an emotional malaise that must be treated is hidden. If someone had told me when I was imprisoned in those obsessions, I am convinced that I would not condemn myself to death by reducing me to a corpse ».

Learn to ask for help

Chiara, originally from Rieti today He lives alone in Rome, where he attends the fifth year of the Faculty of Medicine. To be reborn and arrive so far with his legs, he has placed himself in the hands of the health workers. “You can’t think of saving yourself alone. Anorexia is a mental illness and when you are inside there the only thing you can do is trust people who want your good». Chiara’s story of healing serves to instill the courage to react to other girls and boys with eating disorders. Chiara takes up from the summer in which everything fell. «I was 17 years old and the school ended. My father was getting worse. I did not accept his illness. Before September I put myself in my head to become invisible. And so in two and a half months lost 13 kilos. I was telling my mother that I left dinner with friends, instead I went around all the time on a bike and then sat on my own on a bench. I thought that if I had been more thin the others would find me more beautiful and nice». In those months, Chiara isolates itself from peers and abandons the passion for guitar and swimming. The obsession with her body – how the specialists will then explain to her – is only the symptom of an underlying malaise that speaks of anything else. « Upon returning to school, some teachers pushed me to turn to the ASL psychologist, who followed me for just over a year. Then I worsened and the psychologist made me hospitalized in Todi, a Palazzo Francisci». This is the residential rehabilitation structure that is part of the network of services for the eating disorders of the Usl Umbria 1, the first entirely public to have arisen in Italy by the will of the psychiatrist Laura Dalla Ragione (currently scientific director of the Network and Consultant of the Umbria Region for eating disorders). «I was skin and bones – continues the young woman, who in the meantime had turned 18 -. Without a menstrual cycle, full of bruises on the skin, I lost the hair, the nails broke and had the osteoporosis ». In Todi’s residence there was eight months.

One day the head « Have click »

Chiara remembers exactly The moment in which he decided that the disease would not take over and she would have tense to the part of himself who wanted to disappear. « It was January 10, 2021 – he says -. I was having a crisis of crying in front of the tortellini plate that I should have eaten and the operator who attended me during the meal opened my eyes telling me that If I hadn’t reacted and continued to remove the food, I would have stayed in that state of sadness foreverworsening my conditions, and that I would have lost everything that is beautiful to offer ». In that moment, thoughts light up. « Those words unlocked me – he reflects – and I started seeing my future under a new perspective. I realized that as I had been able to punish myself, like a bad judge, with the same determination I could have cultivated the dream of being a doctor, of tightening new friends and reconciling myself with my mother. Life cannot be just an overwhelming burden, it will necessarily have to be there, I thought. And then I said to myself that if I hadn’t liked it with a few more pounds, at best I could have taken a few steps back. In short, I would have granted myself to fall, to have downstairs, but my head was different, the horizon had changed ». Chiara turns to teenagers who are afraid of « get out of the Comfort Zone pain»(She defines her):« To get the courage to look at the gaze beyond the cage of the obsession and take the first steps It is sufficient to trust doctors and other professionals trained to treat eating disorders».

« The post hospitalization was very hard »

Chiara does not mean saying that the healing path is all downhill. On the contrary. « The period after hospitalization was more traumatic than that during hospitalization – confesses -. I had moved to Rome for the university and for meals I would have had to arrange, there was no longer the operator to support me but, unlike before, I had the tools to do it. I got there up to an hour to finish a plate of pasta, in the middle of tears. I knew, however, that stopping eating was not the solution, because it would not have brought me anywhere, I could not have graduated in medicine and dealing with patients and I would never be happy again ». It takes patience to be born a second time. « Things improved within me when my life outside started filling. The new friendships, the boyfriend, the courses in Faculty, the first experiences in the ward. The problem of food gradually left room for life and has become secondary ». The victory over the disease sweats in small steps and gives awareness so large that it is difficult to imagine when you are at the starting blocks, full of doubts and terror for what it will be.

What can parents and friends do?

Chiara replies without hesitation even for a moment: «The reproaches do not help, indeed have the opposite effect. Those who are sick need to be listened to and understood, even if what he says seems absurd. Focusing on food only puts anxiety and anger, because the real problem is not food, but the feelings and thoughts that live inside. The operators during the rehabilitation hospitalization asked me how I was, they made me talk about my emotions and offered me a different point of view On things. Only in this way have I changed ».

The help centers and the toll -free number

In February 2025 the Superior Institute of Health (ISS) mapped 164 Centers of diagnosis and care throughout the national territory, of which 132 public and 32 of the accredited private individual, more concentrated in the North (79; 34 in the center and 51 between South and Islands). Assistance can be provided through outpatient interventions, semi -residential rehabilitation services, intensive rehabilitation hospitalizations in residential structures, ordinary hospitalizations and accesses in the emergency room in the event of an emergency. You can consult the list of centers distributed by region on the site platforming disturbance.iss.itwhere the user will find for each map map of address, contacts, type of interventions provided, access methods for the first visit (whether or not they are requested: booking via Cup, demanding of the pediatrician or general practitioner, ticket payment). The National Green number 800.180969 is also active, anonymous and free service, managed directly by the Usl Umbria 1which offers scientific information on eating disorders, indications on territorial services and psychological support.