“I was hospitalized in psychiatry.” What happened to the writer

The writer and director Paolo Cognetti suffered a TSO (compulsory health treatment) for a “severe depression resulting in a bipolar syndrome with manic phases“. The author of ‘The Eight Mountains’ was hospitalized in the psychiatry department of the Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan and decided to tell, in an interview with ‘Repubblica’, his experience “to say publicly thatand nervous diseases no longer have to be a shame to hide and that the ascent begins by accepting who you really are.”

On the reason for the crisis that brought him to hospital, Cognetti explains: “In spring and summer, without an apparent reason, I was bitten by depression. In recent weeks, however, after coming down from my refuge on Monte Rosa, I was in a phase beautiful and creative. One day I noticed that my thinking and my language were speeding up. My friends pointed out that I was doing strange things. On December 4th the doctor ordered TSO: compulsory medical treatment. What had happened? “In the manic phases you can lose your sense of modesty or your sense of money. I sent naked images of myself to friends and gave away a lot of money. Everyone was alarmed: there was a fear, unfounded for me, that I could make extreme gestures, or that I would become dangerous to others.”

From there the treatment was imposed: “I found a police car and an ambulance outside my house. I was sedated: since the beginning of December, due to drugs, I have done nothing but sleep.” The fragility has worsened with success: “After the success with ‘The Eight Mountains’, an urgent and necessary story, I asked myself: ‘And now what do I do?’. I didn’t find a convincing answer. Maybe I feared that my editorial maximum, with the Premio Strega , had been touched: the popularity is ruthless and comes at a significant cost.” But from the writer’s words it is clear that his love life also had a role in the crisis: “I know that I fell in love with a woman and that for her, after twelve years, I left my partner. In order not to abandon the person I love she was close for a long time, I also ended the new relationship. You should never give up on love, which never comes back.” Today, to achieve serenity, Cognetti asks for three things: “I would like to have five or six sincere friends, to count on a real family of mine. And then to be free, with an always empty agenda for the next six months. To be able to enjoy the planet, taking refuge in the last remaining original places. In the end it is for me too live the cure to be able to live“, concludes the 46-year-old writer.