Mental health is not properly considered in Italy, rapper Fedez told students in Turin on Tuesday. He was recounting his own recent struggles while battling cancer.
“Mental and physical health should go hand in hand but mental health is not considered in this country,” the rapper told the 370 students at the northern city’s Readers’ Club.
“I faced a very rare tumour in the pancreas and I had to reckon with death despite being a privileged person.
“In that period I had the worst experience with psychoactive drugs.
“I was taking no fewer than seven of them and the doctor who was giving them to me didn’t understand that I was ill”.
Fedez speaking about mental health last year
In March last year, Fedez talked about how his cancer diagnosis led to him disregard his own mental health.
“When I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer , privileged as I may be, it was a traumatic event and only today I realised how much I didn’t take care of my mental health relying only on psychotropic drugs until I found one that really wasn’t right for me.”
He was prescribed a “very strong antidepressant, which changed me, agitated me and gave me side effects to the point of causing nervous tics in my mouth”. When he came off the drugs, “it caused me the so-called rebound effect: cognitive blurring, muscle spasms in the legs, dizziness, headache. I’m not 100 per cent yet but I’m getting better day after day.”
Fedez, 34, is reportedly now going through a break-up with 36-year-old influencer Chiara Ferragni.
The couple have been married since 2018 and have two children.
