Instead of going trick-or-treating, our Naples-based psychiatrist asks herself a dialectal question.
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A Very Neapolitan Kind Of Halloween
Tag: psychiatry
“Dottoré, if today is to be my last lunch …”
“Antonietta, I’m completely fine. Don’t you even think of bringing me a nightgown.”
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Delusions Of Grandfather
“And where is your grandson?” — “Who knows. He must be old by now.”
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Sowing The Seeds Of Paranoia
“They must be dumping garbage — good, it makes for good fertilizer!”
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Of Rats And Men
Our Naples-based psychiatrist remembers a 2019 conversation with a patient on the geopolitics of pest control.
Charity may begin at home, but for our Naples-based psychiatrist, it also begins behind the wheel.
“Dottoré, do you have 1.50 euro by any chance?”
Our Naples psychiatrist’s view on unrealistic social media standards, feeling inadequate, and the price of happiness.
“Who do you think I am,” our Naples psychiatrist asks her patient, “a priest?”
A psychiatrist unpacks her relationship with driving, and her dad.
“There’s still a pulse,” they told me, surprisingly.
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A Very Neapolitan Hatred For Summer
Volcanic outburst about heatwaves and impossibility to cool off.
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Naples Wasn’t Built In A Day
“Do you realize that this changes everything for me?”
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The Walls Of A Loving Home
Ciro was waiting for me at the hospital entrance. He had been told the psychiatrist was coming. “Dottoré, please let me come up with you, I need to see him and tell him I love him.” Two days earlier, he had found his father lying in a pool of blood. He did not understand why […]
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A Sound Mind In A Sanitized Body?
Trying to put the “health” in “mental health” …
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Mightier Than The Sword
“What am I supposed to do with this, Dottoré?”
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Far From The Tree
“Mamma, do you know that when I grow up I want to be a surgeon?” “And wouldn’t you like my job instead?” “Mamma, fixing broken heads is impossible. That doesn’t interest me at all!” Elias is 5 years old. He has already understood everything. Learn more about Worldcrunch’s exclusive Dottoré! series here.
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Photographic Memory
Flipping through the pages of an old photo album with my nonna, I asked her, “Grandma, why were you all in black and white when you were young?” She replied, “The war broke out. One morning we woke up, and all the colors were gone.” Learn more about Worldcrunch’s exclusive Dottoré! series here.
Hatred cannot be cured.
Fifteen years ago, Francesco kept busy by scamming people. He was a regular visitor to the beaches of Terracina, south of Rome, where he was caught several times selling counterfeit Ray-Ban sunglasses. Then came the drugs, which fed a serious substance-induced psychosis and eventually he tested positive for HIV. It’s around that time that I […]
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Don’t Anger The Patron Saints Of Calcio
From St. Paul to St. Diego…
To each mental illness, its castle.
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A Cave Of One’s Own
“Who am I to be horrified by poverty while I have no means to offer relief, no alternative to show these people?”
The scenes of the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees in Italy have been deeply moving. I was particularly struck by the choral embrace in a Naples elementary school classroom of a beautiful child, happy but also embarrassed because he did not speak Italian. It brought me back to a story that Chiara, a young patient of […]
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Something To Be Afraid Of
One day a patient, after listing all his phobias, asked me: “Dottoré, be honest, who’s worse off than me?” “The ones,” I replied, “who say they aren’t afraid of anything.” ____________________________ Learn more about Worldcrunch’s exclusive Dottoré! series here.
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Bygone Tips: My Not So Great Depression
“Dottoré, the reason why I am depressed is simple. But to explain it, I need an answer first. How much did you use to pay for a coffee?” “Over the last few years, it was 80 cents, then 90 cents, and now one euro.” “And what did you use to do with the 10 or […]
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Really, The Nerve Of These Women
If I were running a company I would never hire women. At least once a month they are sick, and in the days leading up to it, there are endless complaints. If they’re nearing their thirties, they want to find a husband and have children. Then when they do, the real disaster begins. Hysterical and […]
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One Flew Over
Putin talks like a paranoid. Biden like an atherosclerotic with frontal dementia. At this point I’ve started thinking that to end this war, more than diplomacy, we need an entire psychiatric ward. ____________________________ Learn more about Worldcrunch’s exclusive Dottoré! series here.
We live as if suspended in time, cautiously looking toward the future with a polite apprehension that I’ve never experienced before. Another proof of this came at the end of Maria’s visit today when I said: “See you next month!” Instead of answering with the usual: “Do we really have to see each other again?,” […]
Dear President Zelensky, I am a psychiatrist, not a politician — though when it comes to the madmen of battle (in the fields of health, fortunately), I have fought more than you. I would like to explain to you a fundamental aspect of my work: when it becomes necessary to convince a patient who refuses […]
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Requiem For A Stray Cat
At the mental health center where I work, we have always taken care of the area’s stray cats. Birba had been around for a few years. A few minutes ago, a boy walked in — one of those boys you see in the street, like so many in our city’s Sanità neighborhood. He looked upset. […]
“Can’t you see it’s a movie? It’s all fiction. Stop crying.”
Last week, our resident psychiatrist explained the delusions of anti-vaxxers. This week, a patient has a theory of why nobody is wearing masks in movies and television.
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Bucket Of Tears
They’re coming out of my ears …
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What A Psychiatrist Leaves To Faith
Stefano keeps Jesus in his wallet. Before getting his monthly shot, he pulls him out and kisses him. Maria keeps him near her bed. Before turning off the lights, she asks him to make sure that her sleeping pills will work. Antonietta wears him around her neck. She says that when she has bad thoughts, […]
Rita suffers from paranoid personality disorder: “Dottoré, my problem is that as soon as I post a picture on Facebook, someone copies me. I show off my hair after a shatush coloring? The next day my cousin is off to the hairdresser. I get myself a poodle? My sister buys one for her daughter. I […]
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A Doctor’s Privilege
A rainy day. On the television, people are talking and talking and talking. I get ready to go to work. I’ll have to knock on some doors, and people will let me in with a smile. What a privilege to be a doctor. Worlds that are revealed to you and, occasionally, universes that open wide. […]
In the absence of qualified staff, grandmothers from the Friendship Benches program offer free listening and advice to patients suffering from depression.
-Essay- BOGOTÁ — Colombia’s Caribbean coastal cities have people with less depression, bipolar mood swings, schizophrenia and other mental health conditions than elsewhere in the country, according to a recent national mental health poll. Is that surprising? A few days after I arrived in the Caribbean, I was invited to a barbecue in one of […]