“They often show us photos of their children, their home, their pets… thus starting the process of reconstructing the temporal continuity interrupted by the war, tying together that ‘before’ and ‘after’.”

EMERGENCY’s approach is multidisciplinary. Giovanna works alongside a mediator to welcome patients to the clinic, before listening to personal testimonies. She also works with the doctor during medical checks “precisely because we know that in emergency situations, the body often speaks and expresses emotions that we cannot yet express using words”.

Among the issues that often emerges during sessions is the inability to ‘turn off the brain’, to disconnect, even at night, thus hindering rest and the physiological processes of restoration and recovery.

When we discovered that she was a self-taught artist who paints, we gave her drawing materials. She had forgotten hers in the rush: ‘I never thought I could forget them,’ she said. She found relief when drawing.

‘This morning I already felt better before the session because I knew I had to prepare myself, that I had a commitment, and it had been a month since it happened: being able to tell my boyfriend not to call me for the next two hours, because I was busy, was a bit like recovering who I was before, finding myself and recognising myself,’ she told us the last time we saw her.”

Federica is one of our doctors here: “Many people are coming – especially women over 60 – with chronic diseases and treatments that have stopped because of the war. They’ve had to move away from their homes, where they had a general practitioner who was their point of reference. Now they are having establish the continuity of care all over again.”